Posts Tagged "women"

Reaching the Gentler Sex: Why Marketing to Women Requires a Holistic Approach. A guest post by Andrea Learned

Posted by Liz on Aug 3, 2009 in emotions, work | 4 comments

I’ve written a few posts on the value of connections and the unique relationships that women have with one another, and with the world at-large. Not only do these connections provide a sense of security and enrich our emotional, psychological and physical fabrics, but they can teach us a lot about how we relate to others and how others relate to us as women.

Midlife is a time when many changes occur, particularly on the career front. You may find yourself reevaluating what you are doing, or better yet, how. I think that Andrea Learned has an interesting perspective on how women relate to the products they buy, because it says a lot about how we relate to ourselves and each other: holistically.

So, when I saw this post on Andrea’s Site, Learned on Women, I asked if she might do me the honours of reframing it for Flashfree. It’s a terrific, informative piece, whether you are interested in marketing or not.

Enjoy!!! And show Andrea some love!

Part of what makes women seem so complicated, from the marketing perspective, is the fact that their purchase decision-making paths can be a bit winding. For most women, there is more to a decision than bullet points listing product features on the side of a package.  They take it all in — from the causes a brand supports, to the friendliness of a retailer’s employees, to knowing that a brand actually does interact with women like them (and so has much better ideas how to serve them).

Women certainly consider the usual suspects of linear product facts: like price and quality.  However, their buying curves give them even more to ponder. They may have checked off everything on their list, be close to a decision, and then hear that your company sponsored the run they participated in last weekend. Boom! She’s sold. Or a woman may be 99 percent decided or buying from a retailer, have a short conversation with a sales team member who was a little too hard-sell — and, boom, the deal is off.

The key to understanding how to reach women buyers is understanding how they think.  And, it is in a very holistic – take it all in – manner.

Not surprisingly, a woman’s more typically holistic buying characteristics are founded in the extra-connectedness of her brain. In fact, in comparison to a man’s brain, a woman’s brain typically has more connecting fibers between cells and a larger connecting tissue (corpus collusum) between right and left hemispheres. (Louann Brizendine’s book, The Female Brain, is a great resource for more brain science information.)

Noted socio-anthropologist Helen Fisher wrote in her book The First Sex: “As women make decisions, they weigh more variables, consider more options and outcomes, recall more points of view, and see more ways to proceed.” Fisher refers to women’s tendency to think in terms of interrelated factors (as opposed to men’s tendency to think more in a straight line or in steps) as “web thinking.”

As a result of web thinking, she says, women have easier access to both sides of the brain in any given decision, and are better able to integrate the emotional (is this company doing well by their employees and the environment?) with the rational (price, features, quality of product).

In Dan Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind, the author points out that “the left hemisphere handles what is said; the right hemisphere focuses on how it’s said.” Women can tap right hemisphere concerns (nonverbal, usually more emotional) much more easily, on average, then men.

In fact, as Face Time author Dan Hill found, emotions may play a larger role in the way women think about everything. This is worth noting, as he also mentions that emotion seems to drive reason more than reason drives emotion.

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Given this perhaps more right-brained, emotionally-driven thinking, the curved path of a woman’s buying decision-making process makes a lot of sense.  In today’s tough economic and environmental situation – this more holistic perspective comes in very handy.   How and what anyone buys needs to be more deliberate.  And, what I see happening now in terms of consumer behavior is that men are starting to learn these “women’s” ways and use the finer points of such decision-making themselves.

What’s that phrase?  It’s all good.

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The above was excerpted/edited a bit from Andrea’s original piece for a building industry publication.  You can see that full article here: http://learnedonwomen.com/2007/07/article-reaching-the-gentler-sex/

If you are a twitter fan, you can stay easily updated on Andrea’s thoughts/ideas/blog posts by following: @AndreaLearned.

Wednesday Bubble: I am woman

Posted by Liz on May 13, 2009 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

Hear me roar!

Sometimes it seems that estrogen has dealt women sort of a bad hand. Except when it comes to our immune systems. In fact, researchers from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center and McGill University in Montreal report in a new study that women have more powerful immune systems than men, especially when it comes to fighting off bacterial infections.

The study, which was conducted on mice,  shows that naturally-produced estrogen actually blocks the production of an enzyme known as Caspase-12 which helps to block inflammation. The mice, which lacked the Caspase gene and were therefore, very resistant to infection at the start, were implanted with a human form of the gene. Ironically, after implantation,  only the male mice became prone to infection. The researchers were also able to locate the exact place where estrogen interacts with Caspase-12, meaning that the action is direct.

The researchers consider these results applicable to humans because the mice were implanted with the human form of Caspase-12.

Unquestionably, this doesn’t have anything to do with menopause or midlife directly. But I find it inspiring that in the survival of the fittest, it’s women who are likely to come out ahead.

There’s no business…

Posted by Liz on Mar 6, 2009 in general | 14 comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icr71H1nb3Q]

The other day, a screenwriter friend of mine told me that her script had been rejected. The primary reason: Hollywood does not love middle-aged women; they’re a tough sell. In fact, the general belief among the studio mogols is that women moviegoers don’t make movies successful.

Okay, I’m not entirely surprised because our society doesn’t particularly like or admire or respect middle-aged women, instead, espousing the benefits of youth in just about every area of commerce. But let me clue the studios and marketers to something:

• There are currently 38 million women in this country who are between the ages of 40 and 58
• Women account for about 83% of all consumer buys
• About 2.5M of these women have combined assets of $4.2B

Have I got your attention yet?

A recent article in the New York Times cites data that suggest that Americans are starting to return to the movie theatre in droves. If this is true, then the paradigm defining the typical moviegoer, i.e. teenage boys, is about to change. And will more than likely include middle-aged women.

Moreover, according to an article in Entrepreneur Online, women between the ages of 35 and 55 “make the majority of purchasing decisions in married households, and more than a quarter of U.S. households are single women making buying decisions without any men involved at all.  Middle-aged women are looking for any type of service that will simplify their lives, says, author of Marketing to Women: How to Understand, Reach and Increase Your Share of the World’s Largest Market.”

So, let’s the do the math:

Women, including middle-aged women, have the buying power in the United States + Americans, including women are returning to the movie theatres in droves = middle-aged women are a primary audience and deserve films (and services) that address their needs.

I don’t harbor any illusions that Hollywood or society for that matter, are going to change their ways. Middle-aged women are accustomed to being discarded for their younger counterparts. But what I do say is that it’s time to leverage the power of the pocketbook (even though it might be a wee bit lighter these days) and make sure that marketers, including Hollywood, are listening.

What do you think?

(Special thanks to my friend Yvonne DiVita, blogger extraordinaire over at Lip-sticking.com, who pointed me to some of these statistics. If you’ve not visited the site, please show her and her fellow bloggers some love.)