Sarah Gee

Leisure corporations, beer brand culture, and the crisis of masculinity: the Speight’s ‘Southern Man’ advertising campaign

Leisure corporations and their brands are becoming increasingly signified to represent certain values and attitudes towards leisure and particular aspects of identity. One popular leisure product and practice is beer and its consumption, which also plays a role in constructing identity and, more specifically, masculinity. Within the context of contemporary promotional culture, beer advertising serves to reproduce the cultural links between masculinity, sport/leisure, and the consumption of beer, which form a theorised ‘holy trinity’. In this paper, we focus on Speight’s, one of New Zealand’s renowned breweries and beer brands, to explore the ways in which its promotional culture illuminates notions of a crisis of masculinity. Our multimethod, qualitative approach combines contextualisation with the critical textual analysis of two advertisements from the ‘Southern Man’ television campaign and interview data obtained from one key cultural intermediary, the campaign’s creator. From this, our analysis elucidates three key dimensions about the important role of the Speight’s ‘Southern Man’ advertising campaign as a site for understanding masculinities, in addition to how they are constructed and, ultimately, how they embody a crisis of masculinity. The first is the campaign’s exploitation of societal cleavages. The second is the campaign’s explicit use of nostalgia. And the third is the campaign’s omission of ‘other’ masculinities.

The Southern Man city as cultural place and Speight's Space: locating the masculinity-sport-beer ‘holy trinity’ in New Zealand

This paper explores a particular place where the production, representation, consumption and regulation of a commodity stimulates and reproduces a particular space and vision of masculinity in New Zealand. Here, we focus on a ‘local’ brewery and beer brand in New Zealand – Speights – where we tease out the ways in which masculinities are constructed in and through a specific space in addition to how certain places become gendered as masculine. Our cultural conception of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand, as a socially constructed Speights Space (a ‘holy trinity’ space) becomes evident through our critical, contextual examination of particular places, events and media that not only help define a city but also influence the production and consumption of masculinity, beer and sporting spectacle.

Carnivalesque culture and alcohol promotion and consumption at an annual international sports event in New Zealand

This study investigated the promotion and consumption of alcohol at the 2012 New Zealand Rugby Sevens Tournament. The paper uses a quantitative survey to gain insight into how attendees experienced the event in relation to alcohol promotions and alcohol consumption. One hundred and six participants completed the survey, the results of which highlight respondents’ opinions of: (a) the appearance and role of alcohol promotions at the event; (b) the link between event atmosphere and alcohol consumption; and, (c) messages about moderating alcohol consumption during the event. The discussion draws attention to how live spectators of one particular alcohol-sponsored sports event perceived the role of alcohol as part of the entertainment package and the atmosphere of the event.

Bending the codes of masculinity: David Beckham and flexible masculinity in the new millennium.

This paper conceptualizes sporting icon David Beckham as the embodiment of a form of flexible masculinity, one that is manufactured by both Beckham and others including the media and promotional industries to target and appeal to male consumers, consumers who are increasingly being regarded as citizens of brand communities. Employing a multi-methodological approach of contextual analysis, critical textual analysis, and specific production discourse about advertisements, I examine a series of advertisements that feature David Beckham to illustrate how he represents a range of masculinities. From this, it becomes evident that Beckham manifests a form of flexible masculinity, providing male consumers with a pastiche of visual masculine representations from which some men can socially (re)construct and negotiate their own masculinity. In the discussion, I argue how Beckhams embodiment of flexible masculinity serves to negotiate and extend the boundaries of gender, bend the codes of masculinity, and diversify the available options of masculinity, all within the particular context of a global consumerist society, discourses of a crisis of masculinity, and the growing civic obligations of male citizen-consumers to construct their identity through consumption.

The culture of alcohol sponsorship during the 2011 Rugby World Cup: an (auto)ethnographic and (con)textual analysis

Using an (auto)ethnographic approach and critical (con)textual analysis, this paper explores the forms of promotion that link alcohol sponsorship with the 2011 Rugby World Cup (RWC). An examination of media articles and online public documents illustrates various elements of the social and political context of the event. I also draw from my empirical observations, field notes and visual representations of ‘Party Central’ – a designated social space constructed on Aucklands waterfront explicitly for the 2011 RWC – and a selection of Fan Zones from different New Zealand cities visited throughout the tournament to extend our sociological understandings of the role of alcohol and alcohol sponsorship in the experience of the 2011 RWC. The discussion uncovers three underlying tensions that the case of the 2011 RWC, as an alcohol-sponsored sports event, strengthens in a culture where the links between sport and alcohol are increasingly normalized: (1) the significance of liquor licence legislation, (2) a competitive corporate sign war between alcohol brands and (3) overemphasis of and inescapable exposure to alcohol symbols, alcohol promotions and consumption.

Is Dorothy treated fairly by the press in the land of Oz? Three Australian newspapers' gendered coverage of the centennial Australian Open Tennis Championships.

This study examined three Australian newspapers and their coverage of female and male tennis players competing in the centennial Australian Open Tennis Championships. Content analysis was used to compare the amount and prominence of the coverage devoted to female and male tennis players in all articles and photographs. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine statistically significant differences (p < .05) between genders. Analysis revealed the average size of both articles and photographs favoured male players over female (25.7 sq. inches vs. 21.1, respectively). Male players were depicted in more action shots than females (70.8% vs. 61.7%); received more coverage on the front and back pages of the newspapers (10.6% vs. 3.7%); and were covered more frequently on Saturdays than female players. The difference in coverage between two Australians, Hewitt and Molik were also examined. The results and their implications from both a gendered and nationalistic perspective are discussed.

“Sexual Ornament” or “Spiritual Trainer”? Envisioning and Marketing to a Female Audience Through the NHL’s “Inside the Warrior” Advertising Campaign

This study investigates the unique association between female hockey fans, dominant conceptions of gender in sport, and the role of cultural intermediaries in the cultural production of media texts. In particular, it focuses on the National Hockey League’s “Inside the Warrior” advertising campaign created by marketing agency Conductor (for the relaunch of the League after the 2004–2005 lockout), that was, in part, envisioned for and marketed to target female audience. Using insights revealed through in-depth semistructured interviews with two cultural intermediaries, the critical analysis in this article focuses on how the cultural intermediaries from Conductor imagined and conceptualised female hockey fans as a target audience, engages in a comparative analysis between the creative strategies in the production of the “Inside the Warrior” campaign and characteristics of female narratives to attract a female audience, and discusses the accommodation of resistance to the stereotypical representations of gender in the “Inside the Warrior” campaign by the cultural intermediaries. These insights serve to highlight the hegemonic position of cultural intermediaries and the disjuncture between the encoding by producers and the interpretation by consumers and fans.

Sport and alcohol consumption as a neoteric moral panic in New Zealand: context, voices and control.

Recent media coverage of New Zealands Wellington Rugby Sevens tournament has focused on the morally questionable drunken behaviour of fans. The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical discussion, based on discourse analysis of relevant news articles from New Zealand media, on the issue of alcohol consumption at the Wellington Sevens and whether this issue befits a form of moral panic. Employing aspects of Klocke and Muscherts (2013) hybrid model for moral panic research, the discussion is centred on three central themes of moral panic analysis: emergence of the issue, perspectives on the issue and overall agreement, and regulation and reappearance of the issue.

Fans’ Perceptions of Professional Tennis Events’ Social Media Presence Interaction, Insight, and Brand Anthropomorphism

This article aims to develop a better understanding of how sport fans perceive events’ social media presence. An online qualitative survey was conducted with sport fans (n = 105) of four professional tennis events (Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon, and U.S. Open). Findings suggest that fans perceive the events’ usage of social media to be about three aspects: interaction, insight, and brand anthropomorphism. In addition, fan responses suggest that while Facebook is the most popular site for general social media usage, these fans consider Twitter to be their most preferred platform to follow the events. Finally, fan responses illustrate three barriers that brands need to overcome in order to successfully develop and execute their social media strategy: competition with other media, a lack of year-round incentives, and technological capabilities of the platforms, which ultimately influenced fans’ motives and use.

Content analyses of alcohol-related images during television broadcasts of major sports events in New Zealand

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature, frequency, and duration of alcohol-related promotions and crowd alcohol consumption during major sports events broadcasted on the SKY Sport network between September 2011 and February 2012. Design/methodology/approach Content analyses for various categories of alcohol-related images were conducted, including a novel inclusion of analysing crowd alcohol consumption. Findings The results provide empirical evidence that sponsorship and activation-related activities of alcohol brands subvert national regulations that ban alcohol advertising during daytime television programming. Originality/value The results serve to sensitise researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and regulators to the prevalence of incidental alcohol promotional material within the overall televised alcohol advertising mix and the broader societal exposure to such images. This research also informs readers that alcohol companies and media outlets produce alcohol-related marketing that may not be in-line with the meaning and/or intent of laws.