Advertising Part III: Women and Ice Cream

Women appear rarely in print advertisements. Most of ads simply depicted the foods themselves, served attractively; sometimes kids appeared in ads for candy or snack foods, or in one ad to promote new calcium-added "La Vache Qui Rit" processed cheese.

Ice cream is an exception. Young, attractive women were pictured in nearly every ice cream ad I saw, especially on coolers in front of stores. There seemed to be a suggestion of guilty pleasure and temptation, as well as an association with youthfulness and fun.

This freezer case advertised a brand of very cheap ice cream treats, retailing from 1 to 7 dirhams (about 12 to 85¢).

The phrase under Titan translates to "the pleasure is enormous" and the caption in the corner translates to "pleasure in every moment."

This ad went a step further and focused on just lips with red lipstick, with the woman biting her lip, presumably in anticipation of delicious ice cream. I was surprised by the more overt sexuality of this ad and the one below, since Morocco is a Muslim country. Tangier is quite liberal, especially compared to Saudi Arabia for example, but it was still unusual because I so rarely saw advertisements with any of the sexual overtones that are so common in the US.

The ads above and below place more of an emphasis on youthful fun, albeit fun involving attractive young women.

I've been thinking about why the ads for ice cream are so different than for other products like yogurt, cheese, or flour. One factor may be that ice cream is sometimes a product of foreign companies. Nestlé is, of course, Swiss, and Carte D'Or is a Unilever subsidiary. After doing some research on ice cream companies though, I am less inclined to think that this trend is merely imported advertising. Pingouin, for example, was started by a Danish entrepreneur in response to demand for ice cream on American military bases in Morocco, but, like Henry's, is owned by Morocco food giant Mobigen.  Yasmina, too, is based in Casablanca.

I think a large part has to do with the target market - it's mostly adult women buying things like flour, whereas the ice cream market may be dominated by younger consumers, particularly young men. And what better tool to sell things to young men than... young women. It seems that some things stay the same no matter where you go.