To be gob smacked at the Ford Commercial advert?

[Notwiththeseknees]

Cannot believe the advertising agency made it, cannot believe Ford signed off on it - not even lip service paid to women's equality/superiority now. We are still only good enough to make their tea, can't even time that right for the busy, important menz.

https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/04/29/ford-hails-van-and-truck-drivers-with-backbone-britain-campaign

Their new marketing director is a woman

I thought the ad was fine and am more gobsmacked that the OP refers to the superiority of women which is more likely to hinder rather than promote equality between the sexes.

I seen two women driving in the ad. I don't see the issue with the woman making a cup of tea for the plumber. Maybe she is retired and was just offering the guy a cup of tea.

I think I saw women driving vans in the advert.

But then I struggled to make out what gender/sex the drivers were

As ads go I can't see anything wrong with it. It has a realistic number of women in it (I spotted at least 3, not including what was the obviously comic element of lady offering tea at inopportune moment). Not to mention there were lots of shots where you couldn't tell either way.

Ner. Doesn't push any sexist buttons with me.

In most of the ad you can't see the sex of the drivers of workers. Can you see the faces of the workers in welding masks, or rappelling down buildings? The odd male face is clearly visible, the odd female face too.

I bet if they put in a few female florists or dog groomers there the thread would have been about women only included in womanly jobs. I liked it. I liked the song, I thought the woman with the tea was more a Mrs Doyle character then a representation of woman of all kind. What’s more if you could tell definitively it was all men under the masks, helmets and various other gear fair play to you.

Meh. I assumed some of the drivers are women. I really can’t be arsed to take offence at this.

And ‘women’s superiority’?

Both male and female actors had the same amount of lines

On the initial start image there are 1 possibly 2 females and 3 males, as well as hitting the multiculturism boxes
Non gendered abseilers
Equal M & F in the office, again with a female leaning over
Genders hidden but 2 female looking individuals in the low shot with the digger
A female was clearly in a supervisor role with the tablet
Appears to be a female in the large digger (But won't assume ;) )
Typical older generation hospitality
A female was working in the toll booth

The genders were hidden enough that you couldn't be certain, my confirmation bias when looking for females found plenty.

Mandy Dean, Ford of Britain marketing director said: “At Ford we are immensely proud of our commercial vehicle range which has led the UK market for 54 years. We are delighted to bring the brand once again to the fore as the backbone of Britain, proud to support the great men and women of Uk business and the great work they do.”

I think it was carefully done so that actually you couldn't tell, after all should we assume gender?

Teafordad
My dw drives our van (well)

Do you also drive your van 'well'? For some reason you forgot to rate your own van driving abilities in your post.

Meh, for all you know all those vans driving over the bridge and on the sand are driven by women. Find something else to get cross about.

Should every advert address all sections of society? Or are they only wrong of they leave women out

Not wrong and I do get annoyed when you can tell they have cast a family by a box ticking exercise not how the family fit together.

Also have you ever seen a teenager that is taller than the parents in adverts or even in films or tv.

If you are doing an advert about family and you include everybody apart from middle aged women and only show a hand of an older woman is that saying women over 40 are not considered part of a family.

I suppose I noticed it more as I own a van..... and I have several women friends who own & drive vans too. None of us have Fords though 🤣

And for those getting your undercrackers in a bunch about my comment "equality/superiority" why can't we actually consider ourselves superior? It was tongue in cheek, but Christ on a bike (or in a van) some of you lot are happy with the crumbs of life

At horse events the vast majority of 3.5T vans and 7.5 T lorries are driven by women, usually with 2-4 horses in the back.

Can’t see the problem. More professional offence taking.

I totally thought this too when I first watched it. Before I responded to this thread I just watched it again. While it has a very tough guy vibe, it’s not always possible to tell if the people doing the tough jobs are male or female.

There is a woman with the tea, a woman in the security gate and a woman in the boardroom. I also think there may have been a woman in on one of the building sites doing the planning bit.

So not sure if my initial reaction was fair - maybe they just haven’t made a big deal of token women in the tough jobs - hey are there is you closely enough???

I might be wrong though - need to watch it again😊

OMG I LOVE the fact that a lot of it is shot in the real North East!!

... misses the point of the thread completely...

@MyFamilyAndOtherAnimals1 it's shot in the North West/North Wales. It's the Deeside/Fflint Bridge.

And there are women driving. Such a non-issue

Although let's may be NE, the bridge etc is NW

Grrr bits

Do you also drive your van 'well'? For some reason you forgot to rate your own van driving abilities in your post.

I thought that too!
Although I do drive a van ( badly) I didn't mind the ad EXCEPT for the tea lady. Oh fuck off with the annoying dotty older woman shite.
Most car ads are ridiculous macho posturing anyway-all that "handling" on deserted highland roads instead of pootling round town looking for a parking space!

@PieceofPurpleSky Yeh, not the bridge - I was wondering about that. But chunks of it look like it's on the Lindisfarne causeway?

I'm just happy that some people recognise that there's land between Manchester and Scotland.

If anything pissed me off, it was the way they slotted in the older woman, offering tea at an inopportune moment.. har de har.

There were sundry women dotted about in the ad.

I drive a van, by choice, not for work, btw.

I'm another one who finds the family car adverts more sexist - greying middle aged bloke circa 50 with blonde younger woman circa 35 with two kids 10&12 kind of set up, he's always driving if it's on the open road, they then switch to her driving the kids and their friends to football or some other mundane wife activity. So irritating! Why don't they ever portray women with younger men, or at least equal age!

And?

OP. The market share of female buyers (not drivers) but buyers, the people who pay for the vehicles, is less tiny. They have advertised their product to their target audience. Don't like it. So what?

There are numerous adverts which portray men as incompetent lay abouts, who cant feed their children, do diy or use a washing machine.

And the lady in the advert was an elderly woman. Can't elderly women call plumbers? Make tea? Own property?

Guess not.