Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Abercrombie & Fitch

I decided to write a letter to the headquarters of Abercrombie & Fitch concerning their advertisements displayed in their store:


Dear Headquarters of Abercrombie & Fitch,


My name is Nicole Lindsley and I am a junior at Brigham Young University majoring in Marriage, Family, and Human Development. I am currently studying media in a class for my major called Media, Family, and Human Development. I am writing this letter because I am concerned about the types of advertising your company chooses to use. I do not think it is appropriate for your advertisements to be so suggestive. I feel that your stores are repulsive to walk through because the pictures displayed on the wall are very suggestive and send very strong sex messages to those who view them. I understand that in our society, sex sells but it concerns me because of the customers that regularly shop at your stores. Studies show that sex sells to men because of the sexual arousal that is attention getting, but the regular shoppers in your store are usually adolescent age.


As I look back to Junior High and High school, I would look forward to the times when my friends and I would have the opportunity to go shopping at Gateway because it had Abercrombie and Fitch, whereas, no other close malls did. We would spend large amounts of time in there and I vividly remember many of the large pictures that were on display. After studying the media in class, I have learned the influence that these types of advertisements can have on adolescents. They often can diminish the self-esteem and bring those down who don’t feel that they are as sufficient as the models displayed.


I feel like there are alternate ways that you can advertise and bring in customers to your store that I would encourage you to look into. I think it would be very beneficial to your store to take these suggestive advertisements off of your wall and instead, display pictures of adolescents wearing the cute clothes your store offers. Scholars argue that materialism advertising is very successful, so using the tactic of displaying pictures that show off your clothes, rather then send a suggestive message will be beneficial to you.


Thanks for your time, I really appreciate it.


Sincerely,




Nicole A. Lindsley

2 comments:

  1. I really like this. It's crazy how much sexuality is used in advertising!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good letter and I agree with you!

    ReplyDelete