Andra Siibak

 

The ordinary viewer can very easily underestimate the influence of advertisers and commercials in between the TV shows. In fact, I guess we all try to convince ourselves that we are the ones who are not influenced by advertising at all. We want us to believe that we cannot be brainwashed into buying some product we do not real need. However, we do not even realize that in today` s media market it is us, the TV viewers, who have become the real “product” sold to the advertisers (Kilbourne 1999:1).

A TV show can only be successful if it knows how to please advertisers. In order to gain the support of advertisers the TV show first of all needs to attract a certain type of audience. The most attractive target group for advertisers is always women.  In print media women` s magazines are known to be the best “cash cows” for years (Steinem 1990). In TV business women` s genres like serials, soap-operas and talk-shows have said to be the best place for advertisers to invest into.

There are many different reasons for advertisers to believe that women are the best target group one can find. First of all, different researchers have found that women are the easiest to crack under advertising campaigns. They can be influenced to try new products, but what is most important: women may also influence others into buying that product. Furthermore, women are still the ones, who usually do all the shopping for the family; they are the ones keeping their firm hold of the wallet.

The owners of the production house Ruut TV in Estonia saw a perfect opportunity to attract the interests of advertisers while launching the first talk show especially targeted to women. In order to ensure the success of the talk-show the editors chose to target their show to women aged 18-49, the age group that is especially wanted among advertisers. The success of the talk-show Mamma Mia was based on the fact that there where no competing talk-shows to grab away the viewers, it had a totally new format that Estonians had never seen before and very sensational topics to attract the interest of women. Mamma Mia immediately became a huge hit among women as well as advertisers.

Mamma Mia did not try to copy any of the talk shows from abroad, it was not meant to be a new Estonian version of Oprah or Ricky Lake. Mamma Mia` s mission was to get women to share their intimate life stories in front of TV cameras. The topics for discussion where taken straight from our everyday lives, or at least from the lives of Samantha, Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda from “The Sex and the City” as this was the show, the editors of Mamma Mia said to have got their inspiration from.[1] Mamma Mia` s topics varied from one night stands and virginity to motherhood, from shopping mania to family violence and midlife crisis. There was something for everybody, even some men have admitted that they got a better impression what goes on in women` s minds from watching the show. The host of the show, Tuuli Roosma, was soon to be known as a person Estonian women where happy to confide in. She listened to their stories, laughed and cried with them, asked intriguing questions and once in a while let the studio audience give their opinion about the topic. In its Eden like studio, where only women were welcomed, one could easily get the feeling that the private was finally also the political.

Never before had Estonians heard so frank honesty about one` s intimate life as they did now in Mamma Mia. Curiosity may have killed the cat but it surely enlivened the audience. Mamma Mia became one of the most popular shows in Channel 2, and a regular TOP-10 show according to the Emor Gallup Media surveys with its more than 203 000 viewers during its best days (Postimees, 22.05.2003). In fact Mamma Mia` s big popularity among its target audience, helped Channel 2 to become the most popular TV channel in Estonia among 18-49 year olds`, Channel 2 –  25.2% ,  TV 3 –  23.1%,   and ETV – 16.5% (Postimees Online, 05.02.2004).

The women watching Mamma Mia had already become participants in “the business of talk” (Manga 2003:57). Perfect target audience and high viewer ratings attracted advertisers to buy their commercials to be shown especially during Mamma Mia. The show was said to be always full of companies wanting to buy some advertising time. The host of the show, Tuuli Roosma, told me during an interview that she new companies that decided to postpone their whole advertising campaigns because commercial time in between Mamma Mia was already full. [2]  

It was the support from the advertisers that helped to keep the show running, although the ratings where not that high anymore during the second season- 142 000 during May 2004. (www.kanal2.ee). Mamma Mia still remained the darling of the advertising department having their firm support to keep it going. The producers of the show explained the declining ratings with unhappy coincidence in timing, Mamma Mia was aired at the same time when another channel was showing UEFA Champions` League` s matches. It seems that Mamma Mia just fell victim to a patriarchal social system, as it is a proved fact that men are usually the ones to hold their hand on the remote control (Morely1992:147).

The advertisers wanted to do a bit more than just to buy advertising time. They wanted to conjure up the producers of Mamma Mia to include topics into the show that would best suit their advertising interests. Producers received calls from companies “advising” them to do a show about a contraceptive patch, or to discuss on a theme that resembled the plot of a new premiere in our cinemas.[3] Nevertheless, the proposed topics did not sound attractive enough for the producers and the advertisers where turned down. Media ethics specialist Philip Meyer has argued that “the ideal climate for advertising is objective journalism because it attracts larger audience than biased reporting, and because it lends ads an air of credibility.” (quoted from McManus 1994:76).

The producers of Mamma Mia told me a perfect example to illustrate Meyer` s point of view.[4] It appears that one day the producers received a very angry phone call from a wholehearted Mamma Mia fan who complained about the quality of a shampoo that was advertised during a break in Mamma Mia. She had bought the shampoo with a hope of getting the same kind of hairdo as the host Tuuli Roosma had in the show. As she failed to get the result she expected she blamed the producers of Mamma Mia for advertising bad shampoos. Although there was no mentioning in the show that Tuuli Roosma uses that shampoo, or absolutely no talk about her appearance whatsoever, this episode confirms that devoted viewers can sometimes read much more out of an ordinary commercial than we could ever imagine.

I decided to do a small research about the commercials shown in between Mamma Mia, to find out what kind of products where advertised there the most. All in all I looked through 658 commercials that were shown in between 21 Mamma Mia episodes from January 1 till the last episode of the show in May 26. 2004. I was hoping to find proof to my hypothesis that advertisers used Mamma Mia in order to advertise so called “women` s products”- beauty products, food,  household and cleaning products, children` s products, non-alcoholic beverages, alcohol, shopping centres, etc. Furthermore, I assumed that the advertisers did not find Mamma Mia attractive enough to advertise “people products”- that are “used by both men and women but advertised mostly for men- cars, credit cards, insurance, sound equipment, financial services, and the like” (Steinem, 1990).  My findings confirmed the rule of “women` s products” in between Mamma Mia- 432 commercials (65.6%) were targeted primarily to women, whereas only 39 (5.9%) commercials advertised products that advertisers seem to associate more with male customers. (Table1).

Once again we must accept the fact that idealised femininity in our society is associated with consumption. The gretest number of commercials in Mamma Mia introduced products that could help women to create a more desirable self, a more beautiful self – commercials about beauty products 121 (18.5%). The most popular items advertised where all kinds of shampoos, balsams and hair dyes that were shown in 69 commercials although different skin firming moisturisers, anti-wrinkle crèmes, shaving crèmes and hand lotions where also popular– 29. The commercials were playing with the age-old idea that “real women” have to be slim and young, making youth synonymous with beauty. Furthermore,   body is again viewed as an achievement, something that women can form and reform according to their own wishes. Numerous commercials about beauty products send constant messages of a need to be constantly under surveillance, in order to remain the object of a „male gaze“. Or in other words, women are still “supposed to be, simultaneously, a narcissist and a masochist” as Susan Douglas has declared (Douglas 1994:27).

In a patriarchal society people usually tend to think that a „ real woman“ should look great and should take care of the cooking at the same time. The advertisers in Mamma Mia seem to have shared the same idea, because the second important set of products to be advertised in Mamma Mia were nutritions and beverages. There were 78 commercials (11.8%) about different provisions, 63 commercials (9.5%)  about nonalcoholic drinks and 47 about alcoholic drinks (7.1%). The most popular non-alcoholic drink to be advertised was coffee with 34 commercials, but an interesting fact occured when looking through the commercials for alcoholic drinks. When women are usually seen as a target group for soft alcoholic drinks like cider or wine, Estonian advertisers seem to have made an exception in case of Mamma Mia, as the most popular alcoholic drink to be advertised was vodka- 12 commercials. Although the study made by the Estonian Institute of Economic Reserach in 2003 revealed that 77% of the women questioned did not drink vodka, the commercials in between Mamma Mia would like to change the trend (www.agri.ee). Furthermore, the same study confirmed that women still prefer softer alcoholic drinks like shampaigne or wine, although  advertisers were not eager enough to buy time for these products. There were no commercials about shampaigne and only 4 about wine.

As shopping for goods is also considered to be women`s duty, it is only natural that many supermarkets and department stores decided to buy advertising time in Mamma Mia. I found all in all 46 (6.9%) commercials about different supermarkets. Women are said to get a thrill form the shopping tour, especially during the sale-season when the shops are oveloaded with enthusiastic women. Furthermore, according to the research made by Barclaycard 77% of the women surveyed „admit on buying itmes on impulse; 66% of those women who buy on impulse later realise that they don` t actually want what they`ve  bought“ (Ball 2004). Advertisers seem to know these kind of trends very well, as the commercials of supermarkets trippled during the sale-season. For example, if Kaubamaja, one of the biggest department stores in Estonia, advertised itself in Mamma Mia all in all 17 times, then during the big sale week it had 7 commercials on during just one episode of Mamma Mia (21.04.04).

According to the survey „Estonian woman during a new century“, made by the Estonian Social Survey Centre in 2000, „many people from the survey group believed that women were given by nature better qualities for home maintenance“ (Laas 2000:31). Recent study by Eurostat confirmed these ideas, and showed that Estonian women spend „on the average 4 hours“ doing houswork every day, that is „almost twice as much as men“ (Matheus 2004:1). Advertisers are very well aware of the traditional women` s duties and therefore we could see 29 (4.4%) commercials about houshold and cleaning products advertised in Mamma Mia. We could also include 31 (4.7%) commercials about personal hygiene products into the same category.

When we take a look at what other products could be included under the heading “women` s products” we see that they are all closely connected with the traditional private sphere (Chart 2). Personal hygiene products, children` s products, household and cleaning products, and all the previously mentioned food and drink leave women with a traditional role of a caregiver, whose duty is to deal with the “unimportant” domestic duties, whereas men are in charge of all the “meaningful” tasks in the public sphere. All the 39 commercials of products that advertisers mostly associate with men were taken either from the public sphere- insurances/ financial services- 14, cars/transport – 11, or from the field traditionally associated with men, like sports- 7, or mechanical equipment- 7 (Chart 3).

                      The last two product categories that were advertised in Mamma Mia could be at first glance added under “people products” type, but in closer look it appears that  these otherwise gender neutral products were turned into “women` s products” thanks to Mamma Mia` s format. Although both men and women take medicines and use the services of different phone companies, the commercials in Mamma Mia were directed more to the women users. Let us take the medicines for example. According to the research about the health behaviour among Estonian adult population, made in spring 2000, Estonian women have incidence of selected symptoms and complaints about their health in general, more often than Estonian men (Ojala 2001: 46). Furthermore, Estonian women use almost all the medicines given in a survey, except the ones for high cholestherol, more often than men (Ojala 2001:47). There were 30 (4.5%). commercials about medicines in Mamma Mia, majority of which were said to be the most popular categories among women, e.g. painkillers, vitamins, etc.

The other product category that started to lose its gender neutrality was different telephone service. Advertising one` s services in a popular talk-show where women so obviously exhibit their constant need to communicate helped to create a special “buying mood” the advertisers look for in programmes (quoted by MacManus 1994:30). 101 (15.3%) commercials were directed to influence these chatterboxes in front of TV sets. It was their consuming potential that the advertisers wanted to mobilize through their purchase of advertising time.

According to Jane M. Shattuc the advertising in between American daytime talk- shows “ is directed at a fat, addictive, lower-class woman who shops at cheap department stores, sues at the drop of a hat, searches out the newest fads, and is never satisfied, even as she buys more and more” (Shattuc 1997:65).  Estonian situation according to my analyses is a bit different and more in harmony with the traditional stereotype of a “real woman”. Or in other words, advertising in between Mamma Mia is directed at a narcissistic shopaholic, who has to combine her roles as a mother, wife and sex object in order to keep the “hegemonic masculinity” alive (Trigiani, 1998).

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