Sephora: Black Beauty is Beauty CSP
Wider reading on Sephora Black Beauty Is Beauty
Read these articles on the Sephora campaign:
The Drum: Black Beauty is Beauty by RGA
Glossy: Sephora celebrates Black beauty in new digital and TV campaign
Complete the following questions/tasks:
1) What was Sephora trying to achieve with the campaign?
1) What was Sephora trying to achieve with the campaign?
Sephora's senior vice president of of marketing and brand , Abigail Jacobs said that ".. as part of Sephora's overarching diversity and inclusion journey, wanted to leverage our platform and our beauty community to recognise and celebrate our black beauty, and invite everyone to participate in it."
2) What scenes from the advert are highlighted as particularly significant in the articles?
A beauty parlour, a drag show dressing room and a black mother with her daughter.
3) As well as YouTube, what TV channels and networks did the advert appear on?
BET , OWN Hulu, HBO Max , Vox , New York Magazine's The Cut
4) Why does the Refinery29 article suggest the advert 'doesn't feel performative'?
The fact the black people didn’t have to wait for “black history month to be acknowledged” shows that these campaign isn’t performative; and Sephora is also apart of the 15% pledge and has been for a while before this campaign. Therefore the article suggests that the ad doesn’t seem performative. It also has links to back owned businesses.
5) What is the 15 per cent pledge and why is it significant?
It is where companies save 15% of their shelf space for black owned brands. It holds space for those historically marginalised groups and allows them to get recognition and representation in certain fields.
Media language: textual analysis
Watch the advert again and answer the following questions that focus on technical and verbal codes. Use your notes from the lesson to help you here.
1) How does the advert use camerawork to communicate key messages about the brand?
With the constant zooms, close ups and pans towards the products and the faces of the people, it’s communicates this constant ever changing atmosphere within the cosmetics industry. In combination with the split screens of how contemporary society uses the original beauty products, it depicts how impactful the black diaspora has been within the cosmetics industry - paying homage to the founders and originators. The brand therefore communicates that it is thankful and grateful that they’re able to take these prides and make something out of them, suggesting that the black community are the blueprint for a lot of the products we use today.
2) How is mise-en-scene used to create meanings about black beauty and culture?
Costume- the costume of each and every individual is significant as it conveys the setting that they are in, the person that they are and the culture that they are from and therefore embody. With the lady that is making the shea butter, she’s wearing a Kaftan or mumu dress - a loose house dress that many African wear. Here she embodies her culture through her clothing, creating a beautiful appreciation of black culture. There is also a south Asian woman curling her hair, wearing a Dupatta. Showing that the influence of the black community reach all types of people and are able to weave themselves into different cultures.
Actors- The actors are also very important, as many of them are of South Asian, East Asian, European and of course African heritage - to name a few - with the use of the multitude of people from different backgrounds, it portrays how people around the world are impacted by the inventions of the black community. That the black dispora’s influence is universal.
Makeup- Of course makeup is one of the, if not the most important aspect of mise-en-scene in this advert. As the entire campaign is run by a cosmetics/ beauty brand, it is about the black community’s hand in creating the modern beauty of the world.
Props- When the woman pics up the hair brush in the salon, there is a split screen fi the original design of that hairbrush for denser hair- conveying the origins of it. Props are a huge part of the ad as they are a presentation of how the original product came about and how we have implemented it into modern society.
3) How is editing used to create juxtapositions and meanings in the advert?
If we take the split screens for example, the original product is shown against the the contemporary version of it - conveying how influential these products are and how the inventions of back propel are still used today, giving them recognition for this.
4) How are verbal codes used to create meanings in the advert - the voiceover and text on screen?
“Its influence is universal” - this verbal code celebrates black culture and gives credit where it is due with a depiction of cultural appreciation.
“There be no cut creases or beat faces without these legendary icons” - With the ball footage alongside this, they expensive their knowledge and expertise on black culture by exploring and recognising the intersectionality within the black community. Paying respects to the LGBTQ+ black peopel within the community that helped along the way.
“The trends we love, the tools we need, the styles we can’t wait to post” - references the social media space/digital age reflect how we interact with these inventions in contemporary society and where you can engage with the advert.
5) What is the overall message of the advert?
The overall message of the advert is that we should give recognition where it’s due, never forget the origins of something.
Media factsheet
Finally, go to our Media Factsheet archive on the Media Shared drive and open Factsheet #259: Sephora Online Advert - Black Beauty Is Beauty. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets. If you need to access this from home you can find our factsheet archive here (you'll need to use your Greenford login).
1) Look at the exam hint on the first page. How does Sephora as a brand and the CSP specifically reflect contemporary social and cultural contexts?
It enables an understanding of how conventions of advertising are socially and culturally relative, dynamic and can be used in a hybrid way.
2) Media theory: how are Butler, Gauntlett, bell hooks and Gilroy applied to the CSP?
Butler: gender fluidity
She argues that gender is not strictly divided into the two categories or male and female and rather exist on a spectrum of gender identity. She believes that gender is a social construct and individuals have to “perform” their gender roles for the view of society and others that believe in these two categories. This idea is represented in the advert where the drag queens, who are anatomically male, perform traditional female rituals.
Gauntlett: Identity
The advert reinforces his idea that the media is now representing a wider range of identities that subsequently challenge traditional gender norms. He discusses the idea of identity not being fixed and people cultivating their own sense of identity through the media and “adopting” versions of themselves presented by the media. He says that “identity is complicated, everyone’s got one.” This text provides a representation of an array of different people with different identities.
bell hooks: Intersectionality
An extremely important aspect of the advert, as the brand aims to represent a range of different people in the black diaspora.
hook’s notion that black women are excluded from the mainstream media is contested in this text, although if we take into context when she was advocating for these theories this makes sense. Now through this advert they are no longer marginalised in the media on such a scale and black beauty is celebrated in this text provides; as they are recognised for the impact they made on the industry.
Gilroy: Postcolonial theory
A theory which posits racial hierarchies is contested in this advert. The text does not reinforce but rather subverts and challenges hegemonic standards of beauty ie. European/ Eurocentric features. And those of BAME heritage, who historically had been underrepresented in the beauty industry of advertising feature heavily in the advert.
3) What aspects of media language are highlighted on page 3 of the factsheet?
Voice overs , mirror shots, close ups , split screens, binary opposites, pans, medium close ups, stereotypes and warm light.
4) How does the factsheet summarise the advert on the final page?
It’s suggests that Sephora is the brand ‘leading’ campaign for equality and it deviate from the conventional focus on individual products or brands and instead centres a message of inclusivity and diversity. Providing an open discussion about gender and race in a commercial setting.
5) What are the four ideologies in advertising highlighted in task 8 on the final page of the factsheet? In your opinion, do you feel the Sephora CSP advert challenges or reinforces each of these?
Consumerism: It is clear that the advert and Sephora as a company clearly reinforce this as they are a cinematic company. After all the cosmetic industry itself as all about consumerism, to buy all that you want, not all that you need.
Identity: The advert makes sure to present many different forms of identity, challenging the traditional forms of it, and therefore giving everyone a place for themselves.
Capitalism: Of course this reinforces Capitalism, as Sephora itself is a global brand and company that surely makes millions
Gender Fluidity: With the ads representation of the drag queens, a perfect example of those who do not fit in the box of tradition gender identities.
A/A* extension tasks
Read this Marketing Dive feature on how Sephora is trying to alter Google search trends and highlight racial bias in algorithms and machine learning. You may then want to think about the following questions:
How is the Sephora advert an example of recent changes in media representations of ethnicity?
What does the advert tell us about the way new technology is changing the way adverts are constructed?
Why have brands moved towards online and social media platforms in their advertising?
How does the idea of ingrained racial bias in algorithms link to some of the postcolonial ideas we have studied recently?
Comments
Post a Comment