Aunt Jemima Isn't Keeping Up with the Energizer Bunny: Stereotyping of Animated Spokes-characters in Advertising - Statistical Data Included

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research,  June, 1999  by Kate Peirce,  Michael McBride

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On the other hand, a 1997 study of advertising during children's Saturday-morning programming indicates few changes from the 1970s. Snyder (1997) found that 71% of the active roles went to males and 84% of the voice overs were male. Females were depicted as inactive twice as often as were males. Only 13 of the 100 commercials contained an all-girl cast and of those 13, only three depicted a girl as physically active. The author concludes that present-day children's commercials continue to reinforce traditional male-female roles.

While advertising seems to have improved its portrayals of women except during children's programming - it has not yet equalized the numbers of men versus women used as voice-overs. This is in spite of the fact that both men and women perceive female voices as equally effective as male voices and there is no consistent preference for the male voice of authority, according to Courtney and Whipple (1983), who suggest that if this trend were reversed, advertisers might find they communicate more effectively with certain target audiences.

Advertising Spokes-characters

Callcott and Alvey (1991) say that research suggests that animated spokes-characters are both popular with audiences and effective in advertising because they may serve as objects of nostalgia (such as the Pillsbury Doughboy and the Jolly Green Giant), they can create an identity for the brand or advertiser, and they can serve as positive affect cues because people enjoy watching cartoons and associate positive feelings with them, which then leads to positive feelings for the product as well as greater recall of the product. The authors found that spokes-characters created specifically for a product or brand produced higher percentages of correct product recall than did "celebrity" endorsers, such as the Peanuts characters and Bugs Bunny, who might represent several products.

According to Phillips (1996), advertisers use trade characters to attract attention, enhance identification of and memory for a product and achieve promotional continuity. She found that they are also effective because they can be used to transfer desired meanings to the products they advertise. They can create a desirable image for the product by linking the personality and cultural meaning of the character to the product in the minds of the consumers.

Commercials with animated spokes-characters have also been found to score above average in ability to change brand preference (Stewart & Furse, 1986). Callcott and Phillips (1996) found that commercials featuring animated characters were watched more often than other types of commercials and that brand liking is affected by spokes-character likability. Likability, they say, is important because it translates into advertising effectiveness. Several respondents in their study admitted to buying products because a character in a commercial focused their attention on the product.