ShowJoe:
By innaproppiate, I didn’t mean it necessarily regarding tznius, although any use whatsoever of women’s pictures in advertising is wrong. Simply becasue a woman is tzniusdikly dressed does not make it appropiate. In the vast majority of these cases the use of a women’s picture is completely unecessary, and as such innaproppiate. MOst frum publications, such as the Mishpacha and the Hamodia, rightly have a no women at all policy, be it frum women or the Queen, and I don’t see why this perfectly sensible policy should also apply to advertising. If anything, it is a far more apt rule for a medium where the use of a women’s picture is more likely to be for cosmetic purposes.
So whilst I do believe there is an issue in the depiction of women in frum advertising, this is not the only problem I was referring to when I used the term ‘inappropiate’. I simply could not be bothered to enumerate all the examples I was referring to.
Firstly, the use of, as APushtaYid has pointed out, Rabbonim, seforim or generally divrei kedushah out of context and innapropiately. Also, the themes of adverts are often not in keeping with the frum ethos. An advert should provide no other fuction but to make one’s product look attractive and make people aware of it. Using outlandish claims and obviously misleading statements, as is ubiquitous in the goyshe world, is almost certainly geneivas daas.
Another issue is the commercialisation or trivialisation of devorim kedoshim. This is a separate issue to them being used as props. It, for example, manifests itself in a advert I saw a few years back that had decorated every day of the sefirah with a different bottle of wine, with the caption ‘This is why you’re counting down to Shavous (Don’t worry Mods, the company in question cannot be identified from this, and besides no longer exists). i thought the general attitude that had gone into that advert, even if not overtly wrong, was slightly off, and it bothered me. Many other adverts follow in the same vein.