Women are the prime target for the marketers. From shampoos to fashion, from food to cosmetics they hold the key to brand’s success.  Youth is the other most important target, from beverages to cellphone; from bikes to online shopping they are the creators of trends. Brands have mastered in creating nuanced appeals for the two.

What about the alpha males? They sure are prime audience for a variety of categories. Cars, bikes, banks, insurance and off late fairness creams target them. To understand what the advertisers are saying to the males, I went through a series of ads targeting them.

Let’s start the day with an undergarment brand, Akshay Kumar, Hritik Roshan, Sunny Deol, the iconic alpha males are pedaling undergarments, it has to be an important category.

There is one undergarment brand called Rupa, which used to be endorsed by an Ex Miss Universe at some time, now is endorsed by the red hot Ranvir Singh. Today Ranvir is one really successful alpha male with his own brand of swagger and street mannerism. Ranvir is ensuring that we forget the feminity of the brand name and consider the brand as one made for the male world. He works hard to lend extra charm,swagger and a dash of Ravir style of humor. Its not often that a whale will take a punch in the nose and swim away, for the Hero has to get the damsel in distress. David Hasselhoff would have quit Bay Watch after watching this ad.

The critical question is how do you as reconcile to wearing an innerwear brand that is named like a beautiful girl even after endorsed by Ranvir?

After you have sorted your innerwear and get ready to move out of home, take your big bike out, suit up, slip on the helmet and go vroom. The girls will look back at you if you are the handsome John Abraham. Handsome hulk though has an issue with his skin colour. It takes double action, with some charcoal and clay and a dual colouured face wash to fix the problem and make him ‘fair’. Whatever happened to tall, dark and handsome? After building the excitement by being the big macho man, everything comes crashing down when you realize that you have to be fair to get ahead. Next time you take your bike out, grab a whitening face wash first, the big bike and the good looks won’t take you far.

Consider giving up on bike and consider looking at big muscular SUV. There is nothing that spells machismo like a car with muscle. There is Sushant Singh Rajput doing a high-energy dance and the Nissan Terrano responds with matching moves. Nissan Terrano is a big macho SUV, which is being serenaded by an alpha male. After the car and Sushant match steps for step, an attractive female comes and drives away the car leaving our guy looking a bit sheepish. So was the car an attractive female who Sushant was serenading? Or was the car a macho male who the attractive girl drives away with? Here the big guy gets neither the car, nor the girl!

There are beverage brands that celebrate being a man in their unique style. One such brand is Carlsberg, which makes possibly the world’s best bar glasses. We know the glasses are meant to hold beer; Carlsberg has a take on board meetings in its latest on TV. Board meetings obviously are meant for people with power and influence. This is a rich fertile territory and the brand could have created memorable male symbolism. The board meeting though turns out to be bit of an apology. To say that probably world’s best board meeting is conducted wearing swimming trunks inside a swimming pool is possibly what an imagination deprived teenager will dream of. Does this kind of board meeting appeal to someone with power and influence? Carlsberg seemed to have served flat beer in this ad.

It looks like being an alpha male in adland is a tough thing. Its time we engage the males in a far more intelligent manner, otherwise #feelslikeaman will mean #feelslikealoser

originally published at http://www.bestmediainfo.com for #AdStand