Task 3b - Adverts and Genre

Fairy Liquid adverts

Since the early 1960's Fairy Liquid have been a very prominant and popular household brand of washing up liquid. This may be due in part to their memorable advert campaigns. At the start of this advertising campaign, there was a clear storyline through the adverts, which was playing on the main selling point of the product, which was the "mild green" version of Fairy Liquid which boasted a safer chemical which helped to make the women's hands softer. With this, sexism was also very prominent in these adverts as no father was ever seen in the advert, and it was only the women who were seen in the kitchen, doing the cleaning up as that was the stereotype at the time. The main idea of these adverts was to sell the Fairy liquid product as something that women could use in the kitchen to make their hands softer and smoother whilst also doing the washing up, which again is a bad stereotype that is very much disregarded and looked down upon these days.


Moving into the 1970's adverts not much has changed with the tone and message of the adverts as they still aim to appeal to housewives, who at the time were burdened with the stereotype of being the only ones who do the washing up, so Fairy liquid wanted to appeal to that with the "softer suds" campaign to help women's hands become smoother and softer by using the product. These early Fairy liquid adverts could be applied to Tzvetan Todorov's theory that states narrative follows a five stage pattern. The story starts with an equilibrium, which is the happy family of the mother and daughter playing in the kitchen. The disruption then occurs when the mother realises that the dishes are dirty and they need cleaning. The problem in the narrative is that the mother doesn't have the Fairy liquid needed to clean it so the restoring order occurs when she retrieves the Fairy liquid from the daughter. As the dishes are cleaned, then the new equilibrium begins and peace is restored. 


Looking at the 1980's Fairy liquid advert the style changed drastically from the style of the mother and daughter in the kitchen format, and instead took to film the advert in what looks like a boarding school for children. The kids are tasked with cleaning up the dishes with a normal supermarket washing up liquid, and seeing how many they can clean with the same amount as Fairy liquid. The advert shows quite clearly that you are able to clean double the number of dishes from using Fairy liquid. This was the start of marketing the product for different reasons other than helping women to get softer hands. This advert also removed the housewife stereotype of it only being women in the kitchen who can clean, and instead it was changed to multiple children, both boys and girls making a team effort to clean the dishes together, rather than letting a parent or adult do it. This also highlighted the safety of the product, as children were allowed to use it to clean.

The 1992 Fairy liquid advert went back to the mother and daughter in the kitchen format which shows that the stereotype of the housewife still exists, and possibly that Fairy had less popularity or airtime with the 1980's advert as it didn't feature their usual advert format, and therefore they reverted back to what they knew would sell, as it is their traditional advert campaign. Instead of the daughter playing with the bottle or doing arts and crafts in this advert, she is planning her future of opening up a shop, which when you compare it to the previous 1960's and 1970's adverts, is an interesting contrast. This sort of plan for a young girl's future was a lot different to the stereotype it would have been back in the 1960's.







Eventually these adverts developed to a point where the sexism, stereotyping and ethnicity were combatted. In 2000, Fairy released an advert campaign where instead of a white mum and her daughter, it was instead and black mother and her son. The son was playing with the Fairy Liquid bottle, and doing arts and crafts to make the bottle look like an animal. This immediately combated two stereotypes from the original adverts, which were that it needed to be a white family that were the main characters, but also that it needed to be a girl who was decorating the Fairy Liquid bottle.



This Fairy Liquid advert made for the 2015 campaign also battles the steroetypes in media. In this version, the dad is the main character shown to be washing up, rather than the focus being on a woman doing the washing up. Despite the man being the main character, the mum is still visible in the background washing up in some shots. This may still be considered sexist to some that Fairy felt the need to still throw in footage of a woman cleaning, but I think it was intended to be used for equality instead. Not only this but the son is also waiting to use the Fairy Liquid bottle to turn into a spaceship. This son counts down the days until the bottle is finally used up completely so he can play with it. The main idea of this Fairy advert campaign titled "Fairyconomy" was to boast that Fairy liquid lasts 50% compared to other supermarket brand washing up liquid as less liquid is needed to achieve the same effects when washing up the dishes, therefore the main aim and selling point of the product has changed over time. They have ditched the almost sexist idea that women were looking for to get softer hands from using a washing up product, and instead boast how long the bottle lasts. This advert could be linked to Vladimir Propp's theory that every narrative contains atleast one of a certain type of character like in fairytales. You could say that the "hero" in this narrative is the son as we are rooting for him and hoping he gets the "prize/princess" (the bottle to turn into a spaceship), and that the Dad is the "helper" that supports the hero by using the bottle every day until it is used up entirely, thus giving the "hero" his "prize".