MARKETING TO WOMEN

In about two weeks the first international mini congress about marketing to women will take place in The Netherlands: What women want .

International research shows that women are playing a more active role in society and buying decisions.
Meanwhile 80% of all buying decisions are made by women. More then 60% of all cars and computers are bought by women. Even with home improvement products women have the last word. (source: NAN magazine - spring 2008).

If this is true, does this have any consequences for marketing and communcations and how? What should we (men and women) know about women?

Location: de Balie, Amsterdam
Date: Thursday, June 12th 2008
Time: 14:30 - 18:00 hour

Today, I read a newsarticle in De Telegraaf.

The first fully targeting on women insurance company Onna-onna will start on the 5th of June on the Dutch market.
Sadly to say that the article tells nothing more then they will be the first fully targeting on women insurer. Nothing said about the product(s) itself or the way they will market Onna-onna. So lets watch them on June 5th!

De Telegraaf
Tuesday May 28

Insurance for women

AMSTERDAM – The first fully targeting on women insurance company will start next week on the Dutch market. As from June 5th, Onna-onna (Japanese for ‘women’) will start with a car-insurance for women. The insurance company will offer next to car-insurances other women related services.
Its no surprise that they start out with a car insurance, as women are the dream clients for cas insurances; they simply create less accidents. According to research from the Centrum voor Verzekeringsstatistiek (unfindable in Google) 28-40 year old women are least likely to cause damage, and if they do, the damage is much smaller.
Earlier, women-policies where forbidden, because they are in fight with the European anti-discrimination rules. By targeting women, but also allow men, they create a way to work around this legislation.
Insurance companies have discovered the female audience as they see that women have more money to spend and are often the decisionmakers, also for financial products. Some other examples of policies targeted to women are Ineas and www.zijrijdtbeter.nl

. What a shame that these products are so openly targeted at women only. It might be a better idea to create transparent policies that appeal to women but do not exclude men.

Nice idea on the Adage 3 min news: people could upload their photo’s and greetings for mothers day to www.kinemo.com for free, and they were then displayed for 5 seconds on a huge interactive billboard on Times Square. And, very clever: you could then create your personal postcard with a picture from your Times Square billboard, although this costs $69, a bit too much for a postcard…

Great idea from 3Iying to ask girls to upload their ‘flip an ad’ on Youtube. Check the flipped print ads on their Flickr photostream. This makes so much sense - doesn’t everyone know that most ads are really stupid and don’t connect to your life at all. Just check the girl’s comments in the slideshow and see how many advertising ideas just don’t land with girls.

What’s a woman without her purse? Purses are among the top shopping items for women and it’s no surprise anymore to find women crying at a Louis Vuitton shop over a sold out limited-edition must-have bag.
Here’s a movie from someone who made a study of the contents of purses. Of course she found many, many ingredients, with an average of 66,7 (mine comes close to that…)
Virtually every woman carries a purse every day and women have an average of 2.4 purses (I must admit that I have many more…). Women carry around their entire life in their purse, it’s a home away from home. So if you want to be a part of women’s life, develop something that she will carry around in her purse!

Interesting feature in the Springwise newsletter: Motorola installed solar powered kiosks in Uganda, where electricity is an issue, enabling people to recharge their phones as a part of their social responsibilities program. Clever idea combined with a good cause as the company helped women to start up their business by providing them with 4 handsets and a business skills course. See how little you need to start up a business…

I reread Trends from Tom Peters and Martha Barletti this weekend, a nice little book covering all the essentials of marketing to women. One part that I recognized all too well is the observation that people always joke and tell stories about the differences between men and women during off-work hours. In that realm, it is accepted as a fact of life. In a business context however, ‘we persistently -and foolishly- shun any recognition of the distinction between male and female cultures.’
This fear of alienating men is the number 1 objection against marketing to women initiatives. To this, Peters and Barletti respond ‘we must begin worrying instead about how thoroughly we have alienated women by ignoring their sensibilities’, as companies persist in their idea of men as the dominant group to market to. They add: We (males) snicker about women’s “shopping proclivity” but persist in reflexively acting as if the “consumer” - for furniture, cars, food, and computers alike - is a ‘he’.
They also deliver some easy to use advice on how to market to women and explain that it’s not all that difficult: ‘We tie ourselves in knots as we go about tying little pink ribbons around some special “women’s brand” - when, in fact, the key to reach women is to honour their complexity’.

This is hilarious: GM made the development team of a new SUV put on high heels, press-on nails and skirts made from garbage bags in an effort to determine how some women might feel getting into and driving a huge SUV. Happily this was only part of the process for understanding what motivates female buyers. According to GM women generally demand more from their vehicles than men do and are more particular about a broader range of criteria. Women are not satisfied with the big picture, but pay close attention to details as well. Although women share some top priorities with men, they tend to have a longer list and understanding all items on it will make you over over-deliver to men.

While products designed for women used to be VERY pink, luckily brands are now waking up to the insight that women actually do not want to surround themselves with pink furniture, pink bicycles, pink cars, pink appliances and so on. Although my four year old daughter of course insists on having virtually every item in her room (as well as her complete wardrobe) in pink, I myself are not a big fan of typical female designs, and many women with me.
If you’re still considering painting your women’s products pink, I strongly urge you to first read Don’t think pink from Lisa Johnson and Andrea Learned. They see pink products as a result of working with old stereotypes about women: ‘Pink products just scratch the surface of women’s desires and often miss the mark altogether’. Typical pink female products can feel patronizing to women. Therefore, Johnson and Learned advice brands not to use a visible approach towards women, that is a product or campaign that makes clear it’s targeted to women only. The best way to resonate with women is to market transparently, in a way that works with women but does not single them out as a special species.
The Female fever issue from Trendwatching lists a number of not so typical products designed for women, such as construction apparel several motorcycles for women (also note the Harley Davidson page on women and motorcycling), although even most of these products turn out to be pink…

I read an interesting article in Marketing week about the way brands can reach out to women in today’s hectic world. According to Andrea Gardner (in her new book: The 30-Second Seduction: How Advertisers Lure Women Through Flattery, Flirtation and Manipulation), Fortune 500 companies and marketing firms have finally woken up to the spending power of modern women. However, most still hold old-fashioned views of women and try to market to a stereotype of a woman. In reality women have created multiple identities, and these are not only defined by age, career or family. Gardner
underlines the diversity of the female audience by assigning nine different relationship tags between the marketer and the female consumer, such as The Scholar, The Best Friend or The Show-Off. These make more sense to connect to women than working form the point of view of the brand and using old methods of promoting products such as the “unattainably perfect girl”.