Gamestation Defends "Sexist" Ad

[runic knight]

Lets see...

Can be read as "Hey, we are cheaper then your already cheap girlfriend" suggesting they have good prices though also implying the girl is cheap too. Sort of insulting.

or

"Hey your girl is expensive but we aren't" Implying all girls require money, a bit insulting too though.

or

"Both cost money, go with the lower priced one" Suggesting all girlfriends are little more then prostitutes, requiring money for their time (be that time contain sex or not, I'll refrain from going into). Yet again, quite offensive.

Add into this the fact the store itself would fire employees (or at least send them to sensitivity training) if a male employee was accused of saying it to a female one, and you sort of see the reasoning why people complain. It isn't because it was meant as a joke, it is because by doing it they are hypocrites to their own rules and t comes off as really sad and desperately obvious marketing ploy. And, possibly, because it is a really lame joke. Honestly, are they going to start talking about living in basements til they are 40 when they advertise the next mmo? These are sad clich'es that you'd think a company based around gamers and who would want to expand their business would try to avoid reinforcing.

 

[LadyMint]

Change it to "Cheaper than a date." It's all-inclusive, and in the case of single gamer's, validates their financial choices.

 

[CommanderKirov]

Would have bought it.

It's witty and quite fun you cannot deny it. It's not top notch humor but what the heck do you expect out of advertisements?

Some people honestly do not have anything better to do with their lives than to try and find faults in everything.

 

[Uncreation]

I laughed. Pretty clever actually. In my opinion if they wanted to go for offensive they should have gone for something like:

Less used than your girlfriend!

That would have been sexist.

 

[Oxymoronical]

I remember seeing this and having a laugh before deciding "actually, I will pop in for a browse". Ridiculous that she's making such a fuss over nothing when it is clearly done jokingly.

 

[CelebrenIthil]

Silly womenz!

How dare you say this joke is sexist! As a random male commenter, I obviously know better than you what is offending to you! You are just being hysterical.

Girls, eh?

...

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2010/01/it-looks-like-were-going-to-have.html

http://thehathorlegacy.com/why-i-never-want-to-hear-the-term-high-maintenance-again/

http://www.derailingfordummies.com/#overemotional

 

[Holy_Handgrenade]

I'm not even offended. It's a stupid joke, trying to sound "cool" by making a mean joke, and only coming off as childish. It might as well have been a "your mom" joke.

How is it a mean joke? It's saying girls are expensive and the game is cheap. What can I say it's true and funny.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

*sigh* Broads.
EDIT: You stupid woman-animal, the poster was calling girlfriends expensive and games cheap, not girlfriends cheap. Dear Xenu, that's a pretty insane misinterpretation.

Pretty sure you're mistaken here, otherwise I think it'd be phrased differently.

It seems like advertising has gone down the whole for almost everything I see. I keep seeing boring commercials that won't state out right what they are trying to do or just commercials that are either made by idiots or people who consider their customers to be idiots.

Old Spice's commercials are ridiculous, but they're at least amusing.

This is just openly insulting, it isn't even that funny : /

 

[Doctor Glocktor]

Snippty snip snip

Given that massive rant and how incredibly offended you are over something so minor, do you burst into tears whenever Russell Peters, Dave Chapelle, or MAD TV comes on?

 

[CelebrenIthil]

Snippty snip snip

Given that massive rant and how incredibly offended you are over something so minor, do you burst into tears whenever Russell Peters, Dave Chapelle, or MAD TV comes on?

Bam! [http://www.derailingfordummies.com/#overemotional] Beautiful! Masterfully executed!
From a truly amazing usage of your great power to decide if a given issue is minor or not, to the deflection of the subject to other random things of your choosing, and the casual throwing aside of all that might have been said in the previous lengthy comment, all laced in with a heavy dose of implications of emotional hysteria, and packaged in a heavy dose of simply delicious condescension ... this comment is simply a chef d'oeuvre! I think I will print it, frame it and hang it on my wall so I can bathe in it's glow.

 

[PH3NOmenon]

She was probably just on her period.

Heh.

 

[SofaEater]

well yeah, girlfriends/boyfriends are expensive. Nothing sexist about this ad at all. I mean yeah it's abrasive and down right rude but then again so are most marketing schemes.

 

[Wintermoot]

yeah that,s really mature guy what,s next? a "your mom joke"?

 

[NickCooley]

This advert has been up for ages, I mean at least a year or so, around Gamestation stores and indeed the country and this is the first, I repeat, FIRST time I've heard a complaint about it. But of course it doesn't matter, one woman working at one store totally misunderstood the advertisement and now it will probably be ripped down.

I could go on about how men are blatantly ridiculed, called stupid, useless, slow, dangerous, reckless, uncaring etc in advertising and is allowed without complaint but I know it is a lost cause. No one cares. The issue here is that a woman has taken offense at a little "aren't girlfriends expensive?" joke (which in my experience yes, yes they bloody well are) and if you don't agree with her then you're "obviously" a dirty, evil, nasty sexist and you're keeping women down EVERYWHERE.

There's only a few things I can really do here, keep my head down, don't bother trying to debate with the unreasoning horde (yes unreasoning, if you can't even try to see the other side of an argument your just as bull headed as any sexist) and of course, try to skip all the ads you see.

 

[Bigsmith]

I didn't find that add sexist at all.
Girls are always overreacting.

*hides under a rock*

What this guy said..

But my over all reaction is also the same as the quoted guys Display picture.

 

[Geeky Anomaly]

"It is pretty openly sexist - girls being cheap, obviously..."

Apparently, she didn't get it...at all. It's saying that girls are EXPENSIVE. Dumb chick.

I've had girlfriends. They don't cost $40 or $50....they cost HUNDREDS of dollars. So, this add is actually true. Buying a game for about 50~60 US dollars IS cheaper than a GF. That 60 dollars can entertain you for at least a year, even more. Spend $60 on a girl...what do you get? A wink and a smile. No thanks.

 

[justnotcricket]

Uff. I can see why the girl's annoyed but it's practically a 'your momma' joke, I assume it's meant ironically. As long as their whole campaign isn't hanging off of similar jibes I think it's probably okay.

Yeah, but shouldn't a company be a bit ashamed of using 'your momma' style jokes to advertise their products? And shouldn't all gamers, but particularly this large bracket of male gamers - who usually like to consider themselves intellectually sophisticated - be ashamed to be the target demographic of 'your momma' jokes?

And to all those who claim it's not saying girls are cheap but rather expensive, isn't that (if you're offended by stereotyping) just as bad? It's promoting the stereotype that girlfriends are just a demanding drain on your wallet. Great.

I think the employee had every right to complain about this ad. I happen to think it's in bad taste. I can totally understand why the company thought it would appeal to the typical male gamer (and, looking at this thread, why it does - the company clearly knows its market), but she still had every right to take exception to it.

And guys on the Escapist keep making threads wondering why they have trouble with women when they're the 'nice guy'... Bleh.

EDIT: to Hoopybees - sorry if this post was a little strong; I don't mean it as a personal attack, but I'd read a lot of the rest of the thread before I quoted your post, so you might have caught a little of the general bile I'd built up to the responses here. =S

It's no problem. And I do agree that the people trying to rationalise this away as having some other meaning are clutching at straws and have entirely missed the point anyway.

I just think that this ad is aimed at a gamer demographic, not as sexists, but as a group of people who enjoy that kind of tongue-in-cheek humour. Some of the most loved games are laced with it so I think it's a fair assumption.

I mean, I'm a girl, and I laughed. They're trusting us to be at least intelligent enough to realise that they're joking, and I for one feel happier that there are some companies out there who aren't patronising enough to think that no-one will get it. It just depresses me when people react to humour with outrage, it's one of the few unifying things we have that everyone can appreciate.

[EDIT] Haha, this is so childish but I now have 69 posts. Hee. 69.

It's true that this ad is not on the 'EA marketing' scale of stupid; I think what I really reacted to was the surprisingly large number of posts saying that this girl was 'stupid' and 'shouldn't have complained'. I see no reason why she shouldn't have complained if she had a problem with it. I probably would have objected to my manager if I had to work in a store with that on the front window. I don't understand why some people think she isn't allowed to complain' and 'doesn't get it'. People take 'jokes' in different ways. If you think about it, she was really quite civilised in her approach to the matter (as far as I can see from the story here). She had an objection, she voiced it through the official routes, and when the company defended it she pretty much didn't say anything stronger than that the response was a 'cop out', and then sat down again.

I see the joke. I just got the impression that it has more to do with the sniggering fratboy mentality than the intelligent, 'edgy' marketing mentality. Although I do freely acknowledge that given the game it was advertising, they were probably spot on for a proportion of their consumer base...
At the end of the day I think it's good that people complain if the feel offended, and they shouldn't feel discouraged from doing so. If people call advertisers (or whatever) on things from time to time, then maybe they might think twice before *actually* going all EA and ruining it for everyone =P

 

[Lissa-QUON]

Oh good lord. I'm baffled how anyone can read this as "it's saying girls are expensive and the game is cheap." Not that that reading is less sexist or stereotypical.

The phrase "Even cheaper than your girlfriend" implies a build up from cheap. So it's saying that your girlfriend to begin with was cheap and that CoD is EVEN CHEAPER.

The English language works sort of like this

small ----> smaller----> EVEN SMALLER

tall -----> taller ----> EVEN TALLER

and finally we start with the adjective cheap and get

cheap ----> cheaper ---> EVEN CHEAPER

Also from my understanding of slang - from the US and apparently in the UK a "cheap" woman is loose with low standards and will sleep with anyone/anything for even the smallest compensation. So yea, its implying that the gamer's girlfriend is a whore. Classy.

One assumes they knew what they were saying with this ad and didn't expect any flack, or that the whole ad department is rather clueless about how this could be interpreted. Which just means they suck at their job.