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I'm sorry for the bad photo. Many of us have probably passed by the Equinox Gym on Lexington. The funny thing is that you probably would not guess that this is an advertisement for a gym when first seeing it. This advertisement is obviously selling her body and telling people that if they work out they will one day achieve this body. I find it funny that their ads usually nothing to do with going to the gym and working out, but they seem to be working. Do you think that this is absurd or a good advertising strategy?
I have actually seen this ad a few times in different places (in the city as well as where I live) and I find it completely absurd. As you stated, if I didn't know Equinox was a gym I would have no idea what the ad was for.
ReplyDeleteI also think the image being portrayed is very damaging, it shows an "ideal" body type that even with working out very few will achieve.
It was last year that I started noticing Equinox advertisements for their images as more Equinox gyms started to pop up around the city. Every single one of their advertisements that I've noticed since then has nothing to do with the gym but they all have the same theme and presenting the same lifestyle. All of the advertisements are highly sexualized that leaves little to the imagination. The male models bodies in their images look like they work out at the gym but the female models that they choose are all fairly thin and don't look the healthy fit models that we see in health and fitness magazines. I have not seen any of their images yet found in their ads with gym equipment in the background or any props used to show workout equipment. In my opinion, Equinox ads have the sole purpose of selling the idea of the glamorous lifestyle. The desired appearance norm for women is to be tall, white, tan, thin, young, sexy but innocent, etc and that is tangible with the price of the gym as well. The Equinox gyms is one of the most expensive public gym memberships that they have right now and many of us in the city can't afford it. We associate these physical traits that we see of the models with class and the "lifestyle" of the gym is the message we are being presented. Hence I believe this is a strategic marketing move by Equinox to set themselves apart from gyms and with success even though it is not a healthy example of the media. But people will always look at their ads and it gets people talking about it.
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