Let me paint a picture for you. You’re flipping through your favorite magazine (or scrolling down the timeline of your social media of choice), and you come across an ad that makes you stop and go “What the heck?” or “Who thought this was a good idea?”

This is one of those ads

The most obvious thing wrong with this ad is the visual elements. Here we have this assumed married couple. The husband is sitting down, with his wife thrown over his lap while he’s spanking her. The look of fear on her face combined with what looks like her legs thrashing shows that this spanking is not consensual. This is problematic because this is depicting domestic abuse as a way to sell coffee. Granted this was published in the 1950’s when spousal abuse wasn’t looked down upon, but it’s still alarming to see it so blatantly and nonchalantly displayed. It’s showing women who may already be afraid of angering their husbands that by not buying this coffee they’re going to end up in the same position as this wife.

 

Secondly, this ad doesnt appeal to its targeted audience. We know that the audience it was trying to persuade were white housewives, not only because that who is depicted in the ad, but also because it says “If your husband” not your brother or father, so we know that this is for wives specifically. We also know that this is the targeted towards the wives and not the husband (although the coffee is for the husband) because women at this time were in charge of running the house and that includes getting groceries. I don’t think this ad made women more inclined to buy this specific brand of coffee because it shows them in an unflattering light making them, even more, less likely to purchase this specific brand of coffee for their abusive husbands. 

 

Lastly, like the rest of the ad, the emotional appeal is terrible. I think the intended emotion the ad was trying to convey was fear. Chase and Sanborn were trying to scare women into buying the coffee. The bold writing and the visual itself is supposed to not only scare women into being more mindful of what kind of coffee they get their husband as to not face retaliation from their husbands. There’s also a bit of guilt in this ad due to wives failing in their wifely duties. We see this with the line “if he discovers you’re still taking chances on getting flat stale coffee…woe be unto you!” This makes wives feel as if their not getting the best possible coffee for their husbands. Also makes it seem like if they do get this coffee they won’t be abused by their husbands. Personally, for me, the only thing I felt was anger because this ad stooped extremely low to get wives to buy their coffee. (Looks like their coffee or their ads were that good considering I’ve never heard of this brand.)

This ad misses the mark because instead of focusing on the fact that its purpose is to sell coffee the only thing people can focus on is the husband and wife which takes away from the ad itself. All around this ad is very poorly done and is extremely sexist, although in the 1950’s this was deemed acceptable enough to be created, printed, and circulated. 

 

Bonus ad:

I found this ad during my search and I just felt the need to include it.

Really what were they thinking? Did they really think this would go over well with their female audience base?