Gender Stereotypes and Learning Patterns in Television Advertising

Advertising, often called the soul of any commercial activity, like any form of mass communication, has an educational function. The education through advertising can be approached either as a function, as a goal, or as an effect [1]. In this study, we define education as the sum of all the actions and socio-cultural influences, formal, non-formal or informal which lead to the formation of the individual [2]. From the persuasive function and the cultural function of advertisement approach, the author of this article emphasises that, on the short term, the television advertisements try to educate the audience to accept, buy and use the products, and on the long term, a more complex process of education takes places: the transmission of the culture, by repeating the existing values and society learning patterns. Television advertising is widely regarded as the most powerful type of advertising and education takes place in a pleasant and subtle way, because it involves stories with imaginary characters similar to real ordinary people or heroes embodying what ordinary people want to achieve, in the same way that fairytales have an educational impact on children. How is it possible to portray a complex human being in only 30 seconds or less? Simply by using stereotypical characters - a sum of the common features identified in the potential consumers to whom the commercial is directed to. Some of the most frequent stereotypes in Romanian television advertising are gender stereotypes. Each product is identified to a character that uses it. This character is created as a sum of the socio-cultural characteristics of the target.