CoverGirl Ad Backlashes at the NFL
The “official beauty partner of the NFL” Cover Girl launched a football-themed ad series, sporting colors and looks to coordinate with team colors. Recently the NFL’s image has been tarnished due to the video leaked by TMZ of the Raven’s running back Ray Rice hitting his fiancé in an elevator. Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Rice for only two games.
As a protest against Goodell the CoverGirl “Get Your Face On” ad has been photoshopped to show girl with a bruised eye to display domestic violence. The photo went viral on Twitter with the hashtag #GoodellMustGo. According to Mashable.com Women's advocacy group Ultraviolet also plastered the hashtag on banners that were flown over several NFL stadiums during Sunday's games. Ultraviolet has not come forward as the creators of the Photoshopped CoverGirl image, nor has the group responded to Mashable's request for comment.
On the blog Jersey Girl Sports the writer talks about how she thinks the focus should be more on the law and the consequences of domestic violence and not the ad itself. She also brings up the question if the NFL will lose money from this ad, and what will happen to other sponsors as a response to this boycott.
The difference between the article on Mashable “CoverGirl Ad Becomes a Protest Tool Against NFL’s Roger Goodell” by Neha Prakash and the Jersey Girl Sports blog is Prakash was very informative about how the protest came about. She gave a back-story on how the image of the NFL has been tarnished recently, and why people are against Roger Goodell and even shared how CBS had to pull a Rhianna song from their pregame footage because the singer was assaulted in 2009.
Jersey Girl Sports was very short about the ad on her blog. She mostly gave her opinion and asked her readers what they thought should happen
http://mashable.com/2014/09/15/covergirl-ad-nfl-roger-goodell/
Reflection
This class has taught me the benefits of social media and some of its down falls. Technology has evolved so quickly that people dent take a chance to see how far its come. This class was almost like a history class to me, I have learned a lot about how the internet was and how it is today. Before this class I had no idea that Web 2.0 is what the internet is called when the user can be involved, allowing people to connect with others and share their thoughts and ideas.
Today social media is a part of our daily life although it wasn't always like that. I found it very fascinating to learn how social media started and seeing how far it has come. Social media along with social networking has even spread to dogs. Dogs can have their own profiles, have friends, and go to a virtual dog park to make new friends on Dogster.
There are plenty of benefits to social media but like everything else social media is good in moderation. Even though social media allows you to communicate with others, share your thoughts, and ideas it still doesn't compare to face to face communication. On the internet people don't seem real to me, they are an image and the information you get is the information they choose to put out which is a form of self censorship. For young people the use of Instagram is to get as many likes on their picture as possible which may stop them from uploading a picture of them doing something they love but don't feel it would get as many likes.
ePortfolio is a great tool to share work that I have done and it is all in one place. It is much easier to upload a file or two on ePortfolio than it is to print it out. Especially for future employers they can take a look at my resume as well as some of the work I've done in one place. I find that ePortfolio gives me the opportunity to show more abut me and my personality which a traditional resume doesn't allow.
NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour
NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour pod cast talks about celebrity apologies in their latest episode. They use Joan Rivers as an example because she never apologized for what she says. Her response to controversy was “Oh grow up”. She always seemed to be performing a celebrity roast for the world. She didn’t care who she was targeting, just a few weeks before her death she made a statement about Palestinians they were very upsetting to people. It would have been nice if she could apologize for the statement she made but nobody was expecting her to because that is her image, she doesn’t hold her tongue.
Now that fans connect with celebrities in a completely different way due to social media it seems like celebrities have more to apologize for. Fans are up to the moment on what celebrities are doing and what they are saying, making it too easy for celebrities to mess up and having to apologize for saying something offensive on Twitter or posting an inappropriate picture on Instagram so they don’t lose their fans. In the case of Joan Rivers her fans love her because she has no filter, she isn’t afraid of saying the wrong thing. Her fans look past all her flaws because it is part of her humor.
The hosts go on to talking about a video TMZ leaked about Justin Beiber telling a story using the N word and talk about how every celebrity apology there is always another celebrity who is willing to back them up, which is true. In Beiber’s case Usher made a statement saying Justin is not a racist. They make fun of Beiber and how he said, “back then he was a boy and now he’s a man”, because everybody will always picture Justin Beiber as a boy no matter what age he is.
The host talks about how he gives writers, novelist, comedians, artists, and musicians who write their own stuff because their whole work is an unmediated version of themselves. We are use to seeing those types of people talking about politics, social issues, and gender because it is part of the work.
Ray Rice come up as a topic and how during the press release there was no real apology for what he did, his wife was the one apologizing more than he was, which was more upsetting. Rice was trying to weasel out of his apology while he was making it and they compare his apology to a child when a parent is forcing them to apologize. It seems like no celebrity apology is ever sincere and every apology is a written by a PR person.
I like podcasts because I like listening to people talk about various topics and their opinions and they make their shows entertaining. It is very similar to talk radio. I would only listen to podcasts on my free time while I am driving in the car by myself but I would never listen to a podcast to obtain information. I found it hard to find a podcast for this assignment because I was looking for a current event and I think a lot of podcasts have a theme for an episode and they talk about many things during the episode. While I was doing this assignment I didn’t want to listen to a whole podcasts because some of them are very long, luckily I found one that was only thirty minutes long and in the topic of pop culture. Another thing about podcasts is you never know when exactly they will be talking about the topic you are waiting for them to talk about.
Aspirational
Anti Selfie Short Film
This short film starring Kirsten Dunst takes a look at people’s obsession with taking selfies with celebrities. In the world we live in today an autograph isn’t enough, people want proof or it never happened. This short film takes the side of the celebrity and how young people today don’t care about the celebrity as a person and only care about how many “likes” they get on their picture with them.
http://mashable.com/2014/09/28/anti-selfie-short-film-kirsten-dunst/