The Rhetoric of Shampoo

Zachary Stratton
10/4/2016
I have decided to choose a very broad subject for his discussion: Gender in Advertising.
For the sake of simplicity and ease of writing I will focus my commentary to gendered shampoo,
for example Old Spice (Old Spice, Smell Like a Man) and Aussie (Total Miracle Collection)
although the same arguments apply to most gendered products. Essentially the marketing
surrounding these products are responses to the situation of gender roles in a consumerist
society. Rices model of rhetoric would fit this subject best, as it allows for more fluidity,
whereas vats and Bitzers models are markedly more static. I will address the effectiveness of
the texts, their circulation, the argument for gender as an ecology and as a situation, the ethics of
these texts, and finally both the six elements of rhetoric and porters five topoi.
As much as I hate to admit it these texts are, in all reality, rhetorically effective. If there
was a more effective way (in terms of sales) to market products to both men and women that is
the sort of marketing that would be used. In 2010 the Chief Marketing Officers Council (a group
of marketing executives that work to have a shared knowledge of marketing trends throughout
the world) found that companies generally spend between 4 and 20 percent of their revenue on
marketing with the majority spending around 6 percent (What Percentage of Gross Revenue
Should Be Used for Marketing & Advertising?). Six percent might not seem like a lot, but for a
company like AXE it can end up being an incredible amount of money. From 2011 to 2016 AXE
averaged an annual revenue of 6.25 billion dollars (AXE - Annual Income Statement). Assuming
that they spend only an average percentage of that on marketing it amounts to around
$375,240,00 a year. A company does not spend that much money on anything without making
sure that the investment will pay off. In order to appeal to the largest number of people it is often
necessary to go for the lowest common denominator, and in this case that means marketing that
focuses on the ultra feminine and the ultra masculine. If a company decides to make a gender

neutral product they run the risk of appealing to neither the majority of men or the majority of
women, therefore reducing their sales.
Being that these texts exists for a contemporary audience they have been circulated
online, in magazines, and on television. The relatively new online aspect sense in todays
climate, as we get a large percentage of our media from the internet. The methods of circulation
are purposeful in their brute force technique. At first I thought that this lessened the idea of
purposeful within the circulation but this technique of saturation advertising[find a quote of
someone talking about saturation marketing] serves its own specific purposes. While it is easy
too heavily saturate a market with advertisements and irritate consumers it is also an excellent
way to make sure the largest number of people are exposed to your advertisement. Often the
online forms of these ads come before a more desirable piece of media. Its very clever to use a
piggybacking method for circulation. These ads do not come directly to the consumer by
themselves, if they did nobody would even consider looking at them, rather the authors tack
them onto media that is already heavily circulated to consumers in an unavoidable way. This has
the dual effect of lessening the need for the author themself to circulate the text, as well as
lessening (to an extent, anyways) the disgust that people feel when assaulted with an
advertisement. People do not mind ads as much if they precede some delicious content. In
relationship to gender there seems to be a connection with very typically male videos and
advertisements for male themed products, although I could not find a source to back this up.
Aside from my own observations, of course.

Gendered is an ecology, not a situation. A situation exists in one point in time as a

singular event, the concept of gender and of gender roles does not. More specifically, gendered
advertisements themselves are a part of the larger ecology of gender, and as such participate in

and reinforce concepts of gender. One of the key things that make an ecology an ecology is that
it can evolve. The concept of gender has, without question, changed in the last twenty years. The
general rhetorical ecology now leans towards gender as a construct and not as something
inherent in men and women. We have invented new words and labels to help define the vast
space in between masculine and feminine where before such terminology was extremely lacking.
A lack of vocabulary makes it hard to have a decent discussion of genders and reduces the scope
of the rhetoric that can exist; the word transgender was first used in 1965, how can you have a
rhetorical discussion of trans issues if the word has not been invented yet? The increase in the
fluidity of language is an excellent indication of the changing rhetoric that surrounds gender.
Advertisements with strong gender biases play into the ecology as a representation of the
extremes of what gender roles are. As does any text that employs or focuses on gender.
Advertisements play into the ecology of gender even if that was not the intent of the author, they
all add to the overall idea of gender just by existing. Rices model works well here, as it treats
rhetorical ecologies as organic and almost uncontrollable. Since my selected text uses gender it
adds to the complicated organic mess that is the ecology of gender. It makes sense from an
advertising perspective, since this panders to the lowest common denominator, and shows
examples of what society has deemed masculine and feminine in an almost caricature-like
level. I would warrant that most scholars would agree with me when I postulate that this kind of
marketing cause problems and help further polarize our concepts of gender.
I genuinely believe that the author of these texts do not care about the ethical implications
of what they are doing. To be fair, the ethical implications of an advertisement for soap probably
do not amount to much, at last by itself. Any issue that these ads are creating are related to
overarching issues of gender roles and a gendered society, further supporting my claim that this

is a rhetorical ecology and not a situation. The issues that do arise from this sort of advertising
are more general issues of gender roles. In general the male gendered ads that I could find
emphasize physical prowess and the ability to get women. They tended to have darker color
palettes and bottles designed with a more aggressive style, which all seems pretty typical. These
images all add up to suggest that using this product will make you a real man. Taken on an
individual basis this sort of advertising is not horribly problematic, its not like they actively aim
to put people into gendered boxes, but as a whole they create an image of male identity as solely
hyper-masculine. The female ads existed in a similar but diametrically opposed fashion.
Focusing on hyper feminism, lighter colors and smoother styling exert an image of sleekness and
softness. Again, I do not think the advertiser cares about the ethics of the situation, but rather that
they only think this is the best way to sell their product. Again, these kinds of gendered ads are
not villainous, but If AXE and dove cared about the ethics of gender their advertisements would
not look like they do.
All of the six aspects of rhetorical situation are present within gendered marketing. The
composers are all the individuals that are involved in the creation of advertisements and product
design. The audience is made up of anyone who is subject to the marketing, so really anyone
who consumes media on a regular basis. The topic is whatever product is being marketed, with
the purpose of selling products. Context and culture get a little more complicated, and a little
harder to separate at this point, since in this instance the context is our culture. Gendered
marketing only works effectively in a culture that highly values gender and gender roles. Without
the context of a gendered culture gendered advertisements no longer make sense, and would not
exist as they do in today's ecology. Given the nature of marketing I would warrant that of the six
aspects of rhetoric purpose is the most prevalent here. Advertisements are unlike other texts in

that they serve a definitive purpose, and only exist to fulfill that purpose. The only reason that the
two ads I have selected are gendered at all is to further their purpose, to sell products. The same
is true for their delivery and circulation, both are designed for the specific and singular purpose
of making people more apt to spend their money.
The five topoi described by porter are all present within my text, which makes sense
giving its digital nature. Body/Identity, as described by porter, refers to the way in which the
identity of the text is presented; the body of my texts are predominantly gender oriented. One is
clearly marketed as male and the other as female. Distribution/Circulation is relatively self
explanatory, distribution is the way that a text enters a space and circulation is the way it moves
around. In this case the line between the two is a little blurry, but I would imagine that these ads
originated from the home webpage of each product before being circulated throughout various
social media and other more popular webspaces. Access/Accessibility refers to the ability for
audiences to see and interact with the text. In this case it means having the access to either the
internet or a physical publication in which these ads are featured. Interaction is just that, they
ways in which people can interact with the text and with each other, usually this is facilitated by
the design of the webpage that a text is featured on. While it probably does not happen often
people could comment on these ads, either by sharing them online or by directly addressing them
in the comment section of whatever media they are attached to. Economics is the most
apparent element of Porters topoi within these texts, they are designed and distributed with the
specific intent to sell products and not much else.
At the start of this project I was not sure if my texts and the rhetoric surrounding them
would work well, but they absolutely fit within the definitions of rhetoric that we have discussed
in class thus far. The ecology that is gender is far too complex to be summed up by some

advertisements for soap, but they are a good starting place and a readily available way to
examine this rhetoric.

Work Cited
AXE - Annual Income Statement. MarketWatch, 2016,
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/axe/financials
What Percentage of Gross Revenue Should Be Used for Marketing & Advertising?.
SmallBuiseness, 2016, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/percentage-gross-revenue-should-usedmarketing-advertising-55928.html
Various artists. Old Spice, Smell Like a Man 2015. Seen on epharmacy,
http://www.epharmacy.com.au/Marketing/LandingPages/CWH-Old-SpiceSmellMan_1389531890.jpg
Various artists. Total Miracle Collection 2015. Seen on google images,
http://cdn.hubble.pgsitecore.com/enus/-/media/Aussie/Images/Callouts/Desktop/Home/hp_dubbo_marquee011916.jpg?
h=480&la=en-US&w=940&v=1-201602221713