Essay, Research Paper: Trojan Condoms

Get It On?
Advertisements use misleading words and sexual content to sell products. A majority of these advertisements are targeted towards teenagers, which lowers the standards and basic morals of society and creates more problems than any product can solve.
Trojan Condoms deliberately target their advertisements
towards teenagers and college students by suggesting sexual
intercourse simply for pleasure. Their advertisement
campaign centers on the physical pleasures of sexual
intercourse. They venture away from the issues of birth control
and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and down play
the morals in today's youth.

On one of their prominent advertisements portrays a white, teenage female shown from half of her face to her midsection. She is smiling and wearing nothing but a brazier and inside one of the brazier's cups is a Trojan Condom. The words "Why wear anything else?" and "Get It On!" are written in bold letters at the top of the page. A caption at the bottom of the page states "New Trojan Shared Sensation latex Condoms. A special shape for him. A unique texture for her. So get it on and share the pleasure!"
At first look, the ad catches everyone's attention. A young and attractive woman is wearing nothing but a brazier and has a condom, which makes people think of sex. The model is smiling and apparently having a good time. The words in the ad send out good vibes and encourage consumers to go out and buy Trojan Condoms so they can have a great time too. It promotes sex and uses words such as "shared sensation" and "pleasure" to make the consumer think of fun. The ad says nothing about abstinence and does nothing to make people think about what they are really doing. They use the phrase "Get It On" to insinuate sex. "Get it on" is well-known among teenagers as meaning sexual intercourse.
The Trojan Condom Company uses pleasure to peddle their
goods. They have an assortment of condoms, such as ultra
sensitive, extra pleasure, shared sensation, and ribbed (for her
pleasure), words which are chosen to suggest that their product can enhance the pleasure of sexual intercourse. The last thing they want their customers to think about is that they could end up pregnant or with a sexually transmitted disease and that the product is not completely effective. This would send a negative message and they would not sell as much as they do now.
In fact, the initial purpose of condoms was to prevent pregnancy and now to prevent sexually transmitted diseases; however, no contraceptive is one hundred percent effective. Nonetheless, the advertisers will never headline advertisement with that information. They use phrases such as "Help reduce the risk" at the bottom of their advertisements in very small print because they do not want people to know that their product does not work all the time. Trojan chooses to use weasel words (tricky words that have misleading meanings) such as "helps" and "reduce." "Help" is the number one weasel word. Yet how much is the really helping and exactly what is it helping and reducing? The companies try not to remind the consumer of such faults in its product and keep the message positive instead.
In neglecting to be honest in its advertisements, Trojan is revealing an immense problem today's society. People don't worry about the consequences of their actions because they believe "It won't happen to me!" Condoms give people this false security. They are told that the condoms are ninety-eight percent effective. What they don't realize is that condoms are two percent completely ineffective. People believe that they are in the ninety-eight percent and not in the two percent; however, it is only logical that someone has to be in that two percent.
The Trojan Condom advertisements attack vulnerable youth in today's society. They play on the willingness to explore and experiment with sexual intercourse at an early age. They make
sex sound fun and exciting. The advertisements lead young adults to believe that premarital sex is acceptable as long as a condom is used. They down play basic morals of life just to make money.
Most parents incorporate good judgement and ethics into their children. Nonetheless children now are often rebellious against their parents and any other authority figure. Companies like the Trojan Condoms Company jumped at this opportunity. They target all their advertisements towards these rebellious young adults. Premarital sex has essentially always been treated as wrong by parents, but the advertisers have made teenagers believe physical pleasure is more important than good moral values and rebellion against parental authority is cool.
The Trojan Condoms advertisements are immoral and in some way contribute to the downfall of the youth in today's society. The misleading advertisements lead to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy because careful wording and placement of words and phrases in their advertisements misleads most customers making them think that pleasure is a paramount virtue and nothing can happen. Sexual intercourse is not simply for pleasure, and perhaps the Trojan Condom Company needs to "get it on" itself as in getting on with the truth.


Word Count: 853