Posts Tagged marketing

Swedish toy company reverses genders in new catalogue

Top Toy, one of the largest toy companies in Sweden, is flipping the gender script in its Christmas catalogue. This year, girls are shown playing with toy guns, while boys are playing with dollhouses. The company was called out a few years ago by a watchdog group for its stereotypical advertising, and decided it needed to adapt to Sweden’s progressive attitudes about gender.

Here’s hoping someday American toy companies heed the call of girls like Riley and quit with the ridiculously gendered marketing too.

Top Toy, one of the largest toy companies in Sweden, is flipping the gender script in its Christmas catalogue. This year, girls are shown playing with toy guns, while boys are playing with dollhouses. The company ...

Gender essentialist marketing hurts young girls

A really amazing video went viral over the last week featuring a young girl frustrated that all girl’s toys are marketed as pink–going as far as making the connection between companies wanting boys and girls to play with different things.

It’s amazing.

Along with this, Peggy Orenstein has a must-read op-ed in the NY Times taking on some of the nature vs nurture arguments made in support of the idea that girls just like pink (in response to LEGO putting out a new set for girls in pink), weighing both sides of the argument. She writes,

As any developmental psychologist will tell you, those observations are, to a degree, correct. Toy choice among young children is the Big Kahuna of sex differences, ...

A really amazing video went viral over the last week featuring a young girl frustrated that all girl’s toys are marketed as pink–going as far as making the connection between companies wanting boys and girls to play ...

Gender essentialist marketing hurts young girls

A really amazing video went viral over the last week featuring a young girl frustrated that all girl’s toys are marketed as pink–going as far as making the connection between companies wanting boys and girls to play with different things.

It’s amazing.

Along with this, Peggy Orenstein has a must-read op-ed in the NY Times taking on some of the nature vs nurture arguments made in support of the idea that girls just like pink (in response to LEGO putting out a new set for girls in pink), weighing both sides of the argument. She writes,

As any developmental psychologist will tell you, those observations are, to a degree, correct. Toy choice among young children is the Big Kahuna of sex differences, ...

A really amazing video went viral over the last week featuring a young girl frustrated that all girl’s toys are marketed as pink–going as far as making the connection between companies wanting boys and girls to play ...

Finally a beer just for women!

Finally a beer just for women, reads the tagline of the website for chick, a new “premium light beer” marketed toward women. In case you miss the female reference in the beer’s name, the pink and black six-pack case might alert you, as it’s decorated to look like a purse. And if somehow you miss all of those signals, there is the little black dress replete with hourglass figure on the bottle itself.

On why she decided to create a beer marketed toward women, chick founder Shazz Lewis had this to say:

Their whole thing is that we don’t need a beer specifically for women and I’m like, ‘Why not?’ The beer industry has been for men for so long. ...

Finally a beer just for women, reads the tagline of the website for chick, a new “premium light beer” marketed toward women. In case you miss the female reference in the beer’s name, the pink and ...

Social Media and the End of Gender?

In my other life, I work as a social media consultant and spend ridiculous amounts of time consuming information about how social media transforms the way we communicate with others. It’s undeniably a powerful tool, has become one of our international grassroots eyes and ears (see: Egypt and Iran) and allows many of us to find new friends around the corner.

So I was pretty psyched to see this TED talk by media researcher and expert, Johanna Blakley, about the end of gender and social media. While I think she makes idealistic points, I’m not convinced by her argument that social media currently signifies (or will in the future) the irrelevance of gender in online spaces.

In my other life, I work as a social media consultant and spend ridiculous amounts of time consuming information about how social media transforms the way we communicate with others. It’s undeniably a powerful tool, has become ...