The company aired five different commercials, with three different themes. There were two commercials devoted to rolling out their new brand, Bud Light Platinum. One of those ads is in a factory setting, where the new age beer is being processed. The other Bud Light Platinum ad takes place in a high rise building featuring young urban professionals who mix work and play. As is with most advertising that targets the twenty-somethings, this ad is full of “pretty people.”

A second theme in the Budweiser ads that ran during this years Super Bowl was the theme of prohibition. The first ad featured a sad and dull society, with everyone focused on working. However, once prohibition is lifted everyone celebrates and Budweiser is delivered to a local saloon by the Clydesdale horses. The other prohibition themed ad takes viewers on a historical timeline ride from decade to decade from the 1920s all the way to the present, showing how in every era Budweiser has been enjoyed by the masses.

What is interesting about Anheuser-Busch’s use of the prohibition theme is that the company did better than most during that period. The company produced near-beer, a product that would rival the non-alcoholic beers on the market today. The company also received special licenses during prohibition to make beer above the near-beer level for “Medicinal purposes,” thus allowing them to stay ahead of their competitors. Lastly, the company was selling malt syrup, which they said was for making companies, but some sources acknowledge that this product was for those who wanted to make their own beer at home.

The last ad that Budweiser featured during the 2012 Super Bowl was an ad that continued a marketing trend begun by the beer company in the 1980s. Budweiser featured a dog named Wego, which when called by someone would hear, “Here We Go.” This has been a tag line of Budweiser ads in recent years and in is the command in this ad for the dog to go fetch beer for people.

This marketing trend, using dogs or other animals, that act human began with the company’s create of the character Spuds McKenzie in the 1980s and has been repeated by their use of frogs, lizards, horses and mice. Wego is just the most recent in a long line of animals used to grab the attention of children in order to build Brand Loyalty. Developing brand loyalty works like this; if we can get children to think of our brand when they think of beer, it will increase the likelihood that they will purchase Budweiser when they are of drinking age. The use of animal characters who act human is the tool they use to plant their brand in the minds of children, a technique that advertisers have been using, which is based on their understanding of brain development in children.

The annual game has been the most watch TV day of the year for the last three decades, with an estimated cost of each commercial being $3.5 million. In addition to the cost, marketers know that the viewership has changed with the introduction of a celebrity music half-time show and the creation of Super Bowl commercial parties – which was an idea that was thought to be grassroots, when in fact it was something that the ad industry created and is now being mimicked by the public.

In today’s installment, we’ll look at body images and hyper-sexual messages that were part of several Super Bowl spots.

One company that has made it a point to use women’s bodies to brand their image is Go Daddy. These commercials are almost becoming predictable, featuring professional race car driver Danica Patrick.

This year’s Go Daddy spot was fundamentally no different that previous ads during the Super Bowl, with at least one woman naked. In this ad, Patrick is accompanied by another woman as they paint Go Daddy phrases on the body of a third woman. The usual suggestive language is used throughout the spot and the all too familiar Go Daddy jingle at the end as we are told that even more is to be revealed at Go Daddy online.

However, a commercial by Fiat robbed Go Daddy of its annual “sexist ad” status, when the car company unveiled their new ad during the Super Bowl. In this spot a nerdy looking guy is walking down the street with a latte and is stopped dead in his tracks when he sees a woman bent over in the street wearing a stunning black and red dress.

The woman sees that he is looking at her and snaps at him in Italian, saying, “What are you looking at? Were you stripping me with your eyes?” However, the woman then warms up to the man, embracing him and then dipping her finger into his latte. Some of the foam drips off her finger onto her chest. She continues to talk to him in Italian saying, “Poor thing, You could do no less. Did it make your heart skip a beat? Did it make you dizzy? You’ll be lost thinking of that sensation forever.” She then leans in as if to kiss the man and all of a sudden he wakes up and the Fiat Abarth is parked in the street where he first saw the woman. Essentially Fiat is using male fantasy as a means of selling their new car. Indeed, Fiat refers to this commercial as Seduction.

Another interesting commercial that dealt with body image and sexual content was an M&M spot. A female M&M character is talking with two woman, while two men look on. The men are laughing and the M&M character asks the women why they are laughing. One of the women says, “They think you are naked.” The female M&M character explains that her outer coating is chocolate colored and she then shames the men who walk away in embarrassment.

Up to this point the add could be viewed as empowering for women, since all the female characters in the spot seem disgusted with the behavior of men, plus the female M&M character calls out the adolescent male behavior. Unfortunately, the ad doesn’t end there. A male M&M character moves the audience back into a silly mood when he takes his outer coating off thinking the female character is nude. This is all accompanied by the male M&M character dancing and music blaring in the background. The female M&M character continues to look disgusted at the end of the spot, but the “humorous” component of the spot shifts the focus away from women’s confidence and onto the “guy acting silly.”

Of course, we can’t forget the H&M commercial featuring soccer legend David Beckham. In this spot Beckham is only wearing his underwear, while the camera moves up and down his body, while we hear the song Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, sung by the Animals.

I think the spot is problematic on two levels. First, it presents a body image of men that most men simply will never achieve. This beauty standard for men in media certainly can impact how men see themselves and it might also influence what women are attracted to, by normalizing the 6-pack ab body.

However, the more devastating aspect of the ad is that it gives some men fuel to say that men and women’s bodies are being equally exploited in media, so women should just shut up and stop complaining about it. In fact, this comment and many more explicit are all over the blogosphere and on youtube, where men are complaining about “feminists” and “bitches.”

The problem with such observations is that just because a man’s body is being used to sell a product, doesn’t mean there is parity in regards to the larger social consequences of this kind of objectification. Men are not being sexually assaulted by women every 6 seconds in this country and men are not suffering from some form of eating disorder at the astronomical rates that women are because of the gender norms that have been imposed on society. Men who want to say, “we are now even,” because of the David Beckham ad just don’t want to acknowledge the tremendous privilege they have.

In this week’s Media Bites we look at a new Sobe commercial that was featured on the homepage of YouTube. The commercial uses traditional gender stereotypes where objectification of the female body is not only the norm, but is a male fantasy.

The commercial also uses some of the 2011 Sports Illustrated swimsuit models as a means of cross promotion of both the beverage and the sports magazine, something that appears on YouTube and FaceBook.

We direct people to resources that take a more detailed look at the objectification of the female body in advertising, with both a documentary film and an online resource called About Face.

In this week’s Media Bites we look at a Budweiser commercial that ran during the 2011 Super Bowl. The Budweiser spot is mocking the reality of Product Placement in films with numerous exaggerations.

In many ways the commercial depicts the pervasiveness of product placement in Hollywood Movies and Budweiser regularly buys time in films. We look at some recent examples of Budweiser being used in Hollywood films – Wolverine: X-Men Origins, Friday the 13^th and Star Trek. You can track product placement in films by year or brand at the online source BrandChannel.com.

In this week’s Media Bites we look at a new Axe body products commercial, which passes as a promotional piece for a new Axe charity challenge for college students.

The video invites colleges to participate in a competition to donate clothing, but the images continue to normalize sexualized gender roles and male fantasy. The reality for college campuses is less about sex and more about sexual assault, a fact which will not sell scented body spray.

In this week’s Media Bites we look at a series of ads, which are part of a campaign for the Toyota Highlander. The campaign uses child actor Riley Thomas Stewart to sell the company’s new line of SUV’s.

This ad campaign uses a child to pressure parents to purchase products based on what is cool. According to the documentary Consuming Kids, children under the age of 12 influence adult spending to the tune of $700 billion a year and this campaign is just one example of how influential children can be in adult consumer spending.

However, the commercial and the game itself does not only provides a false self of reality, particularly for what US soldiers truly experience, it also serves as a tool to normalize the use of violence and war as a means of resolving conflicts.

This ad is essentially trying to get viewers to associate all things American – baseball, cookouts, and concerts with their product. Thus montage of scenes and build up of the music underscore this message.

However, the commercial also uses images of a woman that seeks to present her as nothing more than a sexual being woven throughout the spot.