The Chick Magnet

A seemingly straightforward promotion, Daihatsu’s Hijet MPV ad, acts as the epitome of modern advertising: bold, concise, humorous and riddled with sexual undertones.

Advertisements act as a notice or announcement in a public medium with the goal of promoting a certain product. In order to effectively market their products, advertising firms must successfully cater and indulge the needs and values of their targeted audience and society as a whole. In doing so, advertisements acts as a reflection of society and life, in the given time period.

Returning to the advertisement, from its arrangement and layout one can deduce that it is targeted audience at a young male demographic. This is evident through the use of language and imagery incorporated throughout the advertisement.

For one, the ad’s very opening statement, “Pick up five times more woman than a Lamborghini,” requires the viewer to have a prior interest in women and therefore the desire to ‘pick’ them up, an urge that would undoubtedly relate with most men. Furthermore the mention of ‘Lamborghini,’ a super car brand, synonymous with wealth and appeal, is once more something extremely relatable to a male audience, who take a high interest in fast cars, due to the presumed attention they receive from the opposite sex.

All in all, this culminates in an advertisement aimed at empowering men, claiming to satisfy a need that one might have not normally associated a minivan being capable of, ‘picking up women.’

While this far-fetched claim might entice a number of men it does so at the risk of marginalizing its female audience. By portraying women on the grounds of their physical attraction and as a tool to allure men, the ad excludes them from being a viable customer of the product. Furthermore one can argue that the ad objectifies women, depicting them to be a sort of prize or trophy a man may obtain by purchasing the minivan, in question.

Sadly in a society and culture where ads that do not make use of this type of sexual propagation are a rarity, one must truly consider the true values and characteristics are society holds high.