SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — When Samsung unveiled a new
smartphone at the storied Radio City Music Hall, the Broadway-style
spectacle was memorable not for technology but for a cast of giggling
female characters who fantasized about marrying a doctor, fretted about
eating too much cake, and needed a man’s help to understand how to work
the phone.
The stereotypes were blatant even for an industry where
skimpily clad booth babes are a staple of trade shows and high-level
female executives are a rarity. A backlash spread online as the event,
live-streamed on the Internet and broadcast in Times Square, unfolded.
How
could an international company that wants to be seen as an innovator
and spends more than $11 billion a year on advertising and promotions so
badly misjudge its audience? Without too much difficulty and often it
turns out.
A day before the Galaxy smartphone launch in March last
year, the company was criticized in South Africa for using models in
bikini tops to show its newest refrigerators and washing machines.
Some
months later it was derided for a video promoting a fast data storage
device known as a solid state drive. Two men in the ad immediately
recognize the device and understand the benefits while a woman, who says
she only uses her computer for simple activities such as looking at
pictures, is befuddled.
Marlene Morris Town, a marketing professor
at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, said the
portrayals are "troubling" and imply that men are the sole target of the
sales message. If women are the target, the implication is "they are
significantly less competent and not able to grasp technology."
Samsung is hardly alone in talking down to half of its potential customers.
Joking
that gadgets made by LG Electronics distract attention from models,
Facebook user Lee Sang-hoon collected two dozen images of the company’s
products promoted by women with ample cleavage. The company’s promotion
for a new curved TV was a woman showing off her thighs in a reclining
pose.
"Among men, we talk about how LG does breast marketing,"
said Lee, who noted LG seemed to have toned down its promotions this
year.
Perhaps because depictions of females as adornments and
submissive helpers have long been the norm in South Korean commercials
and print ads, audiences have rarely questioned how homegrown technology
giants such as Samsung and LG Electronics portrayed women. Even as
these companies became global names, ingrained aspects of their
corporate cultures hardly changed. Some of Samsung’s blunders took place
under female leadership. A top marketing executive in its mobile team
was a woman and gave the green light to the Radio City Music Hall
performance.
Heeding criticism abroad and at home, Samsung this
year tried for the first time to dispense with young women in tight
clothes for a TV launch in South Korea. It was a small but somehow bold
step as sexualized product launches are a fixture that provide fodder
for tabloids and TV and much publicity for the companies.
"In the
past, it seemed that a lot of reporters were focusing on something else,
not our TVs," said Kim Hyun-seok, head of Samsung’s TV business.
But far from winning plaudits, Samsung became the victim of the cult it helped create.
Without
models, news photographers and camera crews refused to shoot a new
curved screen television at the Samsung launch in February. Instead,
they asked female assistants hired to explain technical features to
stand next to the TVs.
For some, the phenomenon reflects that leadership in the tech and advertising industries remains
predominantly male.
"Decision
makers in the ads are nearly all men," said Park Jae-hang, who worked
at Cheil Worldwide, an ad and marketing unit of Samsung Group, between
1993 and 2009.
Ken Hong, a spokesman for LG, said the content of promotions boils down to what the audience wants.
"Using female models for tech product photos is popular with Korean readers so the media request
them," he said.
When
he distributes pictures to international media, he usually opts for
product-only ones and tries to limit the use of models to situations
where the size of the product needs to be emphasized.
Even as
companies say they are giving consumers what they want, not every Korean
agrees. Cho Seon-young, a 29-year-old painter and gadget lover, said
she skips articles with photos of women in tight clothes and heavy
makeup holding tech gadgets. She’d rather they focused on the devices.
"Those tech devices are high-class and expensive but these women make those goods look cheap,"
she said.
Minjeong
Kim, an assistant professor of Women’s Studies at Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University, said the imagery has real consequences
for how women are perceived.
"They are inviting, they are smiling,
and they just stand there," she said. "They reinforce the feminine
ideals that women should be nice and submissive."
In the last few
years, Samsung has increased its marketing and advertising to promote
its Galaxy smartphones that have surpassed Nokia and Apple in global
sales. But the criticism of its marketing has been a setback in the
attempt to reinvent itself as an innovator and a trend setter.
Samsung,
which is preparing for the global launch of the Galaxy S5 smartphone on
April 11, said it is making "concentrated efforts" to ensure its
communications around the world respectfully portray women.
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