Blog post I found on Yorkie;
In today’s advertising world, most chocolate adds are geared towards women as the primary consumers of chocolate. Even adds that depict men tend to do so in a way that is attractive to women, rather than attractive to men. It can be rare to find a chocolate add that is directed toward men, and this has been the growing case for quite some years. Even the post-war adverts for Black Magic and Dairy Box chocolates that were in fact geared towards men as the targeted purchaser were done so and with the understanding that young men would be purchasing these chocolates as a gift for their girlfriends (Robertson 31).
I would argue that this is still the case today: Most chocolate ads, if they are geared toward a male purchaser, are done in the context of romantic relationships and somehow “getting” the girl. As an example, this 2010 Baci add, which is all about saying “I love you” with a chocolate kiss, ends with a young man who presents a chocolate kiss to his romantic interest.
[see vid]
Nestle-Rowntree has a product campaign, however, that defies this norm that associates chocolate with being a woman’s food. The Yorkie, a chocolate bar popular in England, is marketed as a man’s chocolate bar, and a chocolate bar specifically not for girls. A person might describe a Yorkie chocolate bar as hefty or bulky, and thus more suited for big strong burly men than for slight petite and fragile women. It is marketed as man fuel for manly things, and advertisements such as this one, depicting a girl attempting to trick a store clerk into selling her a Yorkie are common:
[see vid]
Many Yorkie adds depict stereotypes of men and women, rather than the reality of the situation. The add that my project group decided to specifically push against is the following print advertisement;
The problems we found with this particular advertisement is that it feeds several unfair stereotypes. First, according to the implications of this add, all women wear pink. The color pink is tied to a woman’s feminine identity weather she wants it to be or not. This is a problem at large with our society’s perception of what it means to be feminine or female that is only supported here by this Yorkie add. As a girl who identifies as quite feminine while also disliking the color pink, I find this stereotype particularly irksome in the same way that I find the stereotype that women aren’t good at math to be irksome.
This add also indirectly implies that there is something wrong with a man who wears pink, that it is for some reason unacceptable as a color for men, or that a man who wears pink is not very manly. This add, and the entire Yorkie marketing campaign, also makes the ridiculous claim that because it is a bulkier, burlier, chocolate bar, women can’t have a Yorkie.
Our group directly responded to this ad with an ad of our own:
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