That SAFRA ad – vehemently objectionable or not a big deal?

Jewel Philemon for Online/Offline-
SAFRA’s widely-ridiculed gym advertisement ended its run yesterday. The advertisement met harsh criticism over its depiction of women as “healthy distractions” to men during workouts. I wondered: were young people appalled by the blatant sexist objectification of women in the ad – especially considering that SAFRA, a respected family-oriented recreational chain, has okayed (and refused to take down) such an advertisement in this day and age? More generally, do young people notice sexist undercurrents such as that found in this advertisement? Would young people object to such ads on the grounds of sexism? How could such ads exist if young people – the target demographic of this service – object to it?
Sure, many young people have registered their disappointment over the ad online, but is that representative of young people as a whole?
My friends at Online/Offline and I decided to conduct a small research project to properly assess how young people respond to such ads. We hypothesized that young men are not bothered by this ad and young women will find the same ad distasteful and object to it. We were also aware of the possibility that some respondents may not identify sexism or may not care about the sexist element and simply rate the service being marketed.
Thus, we formulated three categories in which we’ll slot our respondents in:

For the sake of this project we categorized young men and young women as those between the ages of 15 and 30. We collected data from 82 respondents in our target age group (41 females and males each)
The questions we asked are:

1. Please rate the effectiveness of this advertisement:
   1. Effective
   2. Somewhat Effective
   3. No Opinion/Neutral
   4. Somewhat Ineffective
   5. Ineffective
2. Please explain your effectiveness rating.
3. How do your personally feel about this advertisement?

From our research, we found that 7 people from our total population found the ad effective, 23 found it somewhat effective, 16 had no opinion, 24 found it somewhat effective, and 13 respondents found the ad ineffective.

Since our hypothesis is a two-parter we had to analyse the results by gender. From young men in our target group, we had 7 respondents awarding the ad an effective rating, 11 felt it was somewhat effective, 5 people had no opinion or were neutral, 12 people thought it was somewhat effective, and 6 people thought the ad was ineffective.

For women, No one thought the ad was effective, 13 people thought the ad was somewhat effective, 11 women had no opinion or were neutral, 11 thought the ad was somewhat ineffective and 7 women gave the ad an ineffective rating.
Now on to the qualitative data – we needed to know why people rated the ad as they did and how they felt about the ad. Let’s break up the data:
Only 3 out of 7 female respondents who rated the advertisement “ineffective” indicated distaste due to the “sexist,” and “degrading” nature of the advertisement. 2/4 of the remaining respondents in this group rated the advertisement ineffective because they found the marketing copy “lame,” and the rest said that they thought the advertisement was ineffective because they do not enjoy working out.
5 out of 11 female respondents who rated the advertisement “somewhat ineffective” indicated distaste, while the rest (6 out of 11) said that they awarded an ineffectiveness rating because the advertisement was “not catchy,” “uninteresting,” or said that they were “not bothered” by it.
8 out of 11 female respondents who marked their response towards the advertisement as “no opinion/neutral” rated the visual solely based on the advertising copy. Only 3 out the 11 respondents in this category detected sexism in the visual but brushed it off as “normal.”
Interestingly, 5 out of 12 female respondents who awarded the advertisement a “somewhat effective” rating indicated distaste using terms like “sexist,” “insulting,” and “appalling.” One respondent in this sub-category even deemed the advertisement as one that “promotes sexual harassment” Those in this sub-category, however, defended their rating saying that although they find the advertisement distasteful, there is “no point denying” that people will not think too much of it.  The remaining respondents (7 out of 12) called the advertisement “normal, “funny,” and “appealing.”
There were no female respondents who rated the advertisement ‘effective.”
For men, 4 out of 6 male respondents who rated the advertisement “ineffective” felt uninterested by the service being marketed while the remaining 2 out of 6 respondents found the advertisement ineffective due to “sexist” connotations.
2 out of the 12 male respondents who rated the advertisement “somewhat Ineffective” did so as they found the advertisement “tactless,” and “sexist,” while the remaining 10 out of 12 male respondents found the advertisement inadequate in marketing the service.
3 out of the 5 male respondents who marked the advertisement with “no opinion/neutral” felt indifferent towards the visual, while the remaining 2 respondents found the advertisement “inadequate,” and “offensive” respectively.
9 out of the 11 respondents who indicated that the advertisement was “somewhat effective” found the advertisement to be “fine,” “good,” “basic,” or “well done.” The rest (2 out of 11) found that the advertisement “may be offensive to women” and “poor taste but strikes a chord,” respectively.
All of the 7 respondents who marked the advertisement “effective” indicated that they thoroughly enjoyed the advertisement and that the advertisement reflects reality and real motivations to work out, using terms such as “FUN” “WOMEN” “GYM” to express their satisfaction.
In total, we found that 35 young men out of the 41 surveyed were oblivious to any sexist connotations to the ad – they did not detect any sexist element. 2 men detect sexist connotations and objected to it and 4 men detected sexism but were unbothered by it.
25 young women of the 41 surveyed did not detect any sexist connotations, 8 people detected and objected to sexism, and another 8 respondents also detect sexist connotations but were not bothered by it.

Overall, while young women did, marginally, detect sexist connotations and object to it in greater frequency than men, the difference is not substantive enough to define gender as a dependent variable upon which young individuals perceive gender prejudices. However, it is interesting to note that 10 per cent of the total population were aware of sexual objectification in the advertisement but were not bothered by it – shrinking the population of those who detected sexism and objected to the advertisement on those grounds to a meagre 8.2 per cent. Had the “unbothered” population objected to the advertisement, the “objecting” population would have grown over double its current value – making the increased value a substantive variable.
It must also be noted that a large percentage of the total sample population (almost 50 per cent) were completely oblivious to any sexist connotations in the advertisement.
Although these results are not definitive of young people by any stretch of the imagination, is it perhaps indicative of the apathy thrust upon young minds by larger society? Are the results of this – admittedly small – survey simply a one-off or indicative of a social system where young people are inundated with standardized expectations of what they should achieve in life – good grades, a good job and a financially stable future – concurrently being conditioned to become and remain apathetic towards critical issues?
 
The Survey Method
We surveyed a total of 100 participants online over a course of three days (82 of which fit our target demographic). We also employed certain additional strategies because online surveys require a greater degree of voluntary participation: this may result in a higher level of self-awareness, reactivity, and an increased potential for participants to (subconsciously or otherwise) respond in ways that may increase their social desirability. To counter this, we partially concealed our true research objective to simulate a more naturalistic environment: we tested respondents on the effectiveness of the advertisement as we didn’t want participants to look out for subliminal messaging. We wanted to identify what first strikes them about the advertisement. This concealed research objective, the use of open-ended questions, and the deliberate absence of a physical surveyor limit the potential communication of experimenter biases and expectations. We also asked a combination of scale and open-ended questions to help yield qualitative and quantifiable results.
 
Online/Offline is a youth-run initiative aimed at bridging the online and offline gap in youth discourse.