Deceptive Advertising: Athletes and Women in Sport

2. Advertising is a powerful force in American
culture.
It exists to sell products and
services.
In 1750 BC, the Code of Hammurabi made it a
crime, punishable by death, to sell anything
to a child without first obtaining a power of
attorney.
Starting in the 1990’s, selling products to
American children became a standard
business practice.

3. • The use of celebrities and other endorsers
in advertisements is a standard marketing
technique aimed at promoting new
products and enhancing market share of
existing brands.
• Audiences feel that they personally know
these famous personalities and often
develop an “illusion of intimacy” with them.
• Advertisers are well aware of the positive
influence that celebrities can bring to a
persuasive message.
• Celebrities are individuals who are symbolic
icons, popular in the culture, and transfer their
symbolic meaning to the products they
endorse in advertising.
• Marketers hope that consumers accept and
consume the meanings celebrity endorsers
represent and then link these meanings with
their products.

4. • Sneaker companies routinely use celebrity
athletes, like Michael Jordan, to help
position and market their premium brands.
• Young consumers often look upon
celebrities as their role models.
• The false advertising is that purchasing the
product will elevate the consumer to the
same level.
I wanna be like Mike!
It’s gotta be the shoes!

5. • Deceptive Advertising involves the use of
false statements or inaccurate information
related to cost, amount, and quality of the
product.
• Athletic apparel advertisements featuring
high-profile athletes take advantage of
youth by deluding them into “thinking they
can achieve their dreams by putting out
good money.”

6. • To further increase the persuasive appeal of
advertising, manufacturers have come to
rely heavily on the use of celebrities and
well-known individuals as endorsers of
their products.
• In their preoccupation to develop ads that
are persuasive, some advertisers may pay
inadequate attention to other criteria such
as informativeness and truthfulness.

7. • The youth are more vulnerable to mass
persuasion and deception than adults, and
they constitute both “the audience with the
greatest gullibility and the least amount of
money.”

8. • Everyone is hurt by deceptive advertising and
harmless bluffing, but those most susceptible to
such techniques are children, the uninformed, the
less educated, the poor, and the ill.
• These individuals are considered vulnerable; they
may put their faith in the advertised product, be
ultimately hurt by the deception, and suffer the
wrath of false advertising.
• Deceptive advertising is not persuasion, but
manipulation that violates the principle of
maintaining respect for others.

9. We discovered that if a woman is violent, she’s
too harsh. And if she’s ‘active’ (i.e., an aerobics
nut), she’s too light. We realized we wanted
them somewhere in between—they have to be
violent and still be feminine.
-Terry Sullivan, CEO,
Women’s Professional Football League
I don’t think women will ever totally mimic
male athletes, not because they are morally
superior but because of sexism. We won’t
allow women the same degree of freedom.
Mary Jo Kane, director
Tucker Center for Research
on Girls & Women in Sport

10. • As girls grow up, they often want to see what
is possible before they experiment with and
develop their own athletic skills. This is the
case because many of them still receive
mixed messages about becoming serious
athletes.
• The visions of being an athlete can be
clouded by swimsuit models in Sports
Illustrated.

11. • Female athletes have begun to be featured in
ads and marketing campaigns with high levels
of sex appeal.
• The promotion of these female athletes focuses
not only on their sports acumen, but on their
bodies which serve as an obvious endorsement
of sex and sexual appeal.
• Young athletes are led to believe that they can
only take part in that sport, if they too are sexy
and beautiful.

12. • The USA Women’s Beach Volleyball team created
widespread attention during the Olympics.
• Whether intentional or not on the part of the
camera operator and producer, viewers did see
players’ backsides throughout all games, and these
buttock shots included a large number of instances
when players made uniform adjustments.
• These media outlets chose to select the images that
showcased the women as sexual objects, not their
strength, athleticism, or power.
Female athletes appear to get more
coverage if they are physically
attractive and scantily clad, which
tends to deemphasize their athletic
prowess.
When it comes to marketing female
athletes and sports, sex sells better
than athletic skill..
Winning just doesn’t matter as much as it used to…There
are other ways these athletes can capture the public’s
attention: by being gorgeous or by being a ‘bad boy.’ And
getting the public’s attention is all these companies really
care about.

13. The real winners in advertising are not the
consumer or athlete, but the advertisers
themselves.

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