Marketing to Women: Women Watching Super Bowl Too!

For those in advertising that are spending their Super Bowl money to reach only men, they are missing the wings and nachos boat.  The number of men versus women watching is getting more narrow.  Who is sitting next to the NFL commissioner at the game this year?  Why a little girl from Utah named Sam Gordon — a girl playing in an all-boys tackle football league.

Last year, 54 percent of the roughly 111 million viewers who tuned in to watch the Packers and Steelers on Fox were men, compared to 46 percent women.  And those women were not just delivering the pizza and chips to the guys in the family room.  They are real fans.

A recent survey by Advertising Age showed that 55 percent of American women watched at least one regular season NFL game last season, and women account for 20 percent of all fantasy football participants. In the last 10 years, the gender gap in the Super Bowl audience has narrowed from 14 percentage points in 2002 to 8 points in 2012. More women are watching the Super Bowl than the Academy Awards!

Since 2004, the NFL has been promoting more family-oriented half-time entertainment and fan attractions.  It’s no surprise that Beyonce is the half-time performer this year.  She appeals to both strong men and women, and she rocks that modern sensibility for young women. It is also not surprising that the first spot coming out of the half-time show was an All American Jeep and USO salute to our military, to our families and to our faith – voiced by Oprah.  As the mother of a deployed Marine, it definitely was my favorite.  My husband said, “Let’s go buy a Jeep.”

So what gives with many of the Super Bowl ads?  Many are sex-driven, testosterone celebrations.  Advertisers are being challenged to find a way to embrace female sexuality without degrading women.   “Especially given the female viewership, advertisers have to be broadly acceptable without being polarizing,” said Tim Calkins, marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

The tasteless award this year may be model Kate Upton in a spot for Mercedes.  In the ad, the model is hand-washing a new Mercedes Benz C-Class in revealing attire for the entire 90 seconds of air-time.

But here’s the interesting dilemma:  More than half of all women polled in a PHD survey reported that Super Bowl advertisements using sex appeal equally targeted both genders. Seventy-four percent of women aged 18 to 34 said they liked the sexy images in the previous year’s Super Bowl advertisements, compared with 84 percent of men in the same age range.  So how do advertisers create the right mix of  female sexuality without the woman being portrayed in a demeaning fashion.

One of the ongoing issues for the advertising community is the lack of female creative directors.  Some estimate that only 3-4 percent of creative directors are female.  Why is that a problem?  Because creative departments start to take on the personality of a frat house.  Women are not fairly represented unless there are strong women in the account management and/or client side.

Marketing to Women: Women Love Football Too!

There is a prevalent myth among marketers that women don’t watch sports.  The NFL is debunking that myth.   Here’s some info from Advertising Age that shows that football scores with women.  The Super Bowl’s female audience has more than doubled in only five years.  The last three Super Bowl telecasts have set records for being the most-watched shows by female viewers.

And NBC’s “Sunday Night Football”  has  become the first sports show to finish in the top spot in prime time.  Why?  Well the weekly match-ups ranked fourth among women 18 to 49 years old, behind only “American Idol” (Wednesday), “The Voice” and “American Idol” (Thursday).

Another clue to the popularity should be the number of pink shoes and gloves you have seen on NFL players during Breast Cancer Awareness month.  The National Football League and NFL Players Association support October’s National Breast Cancer Awareness Month with their fourth-annual national breast cancer screening initiative and fundraising campaign. The campaign seems to be working - 64% of NFL female fans and 61% of all NFL fans identify the importance of annual screenings, especially for women over 40.

And football fashion is not far behind.  Remember those spots about NFL apparel for women?  Well, it turns out that it’s the NFL’s fastest growing consumer-products business, showing double-digit growth.  And who’s jersey reigns? Last year it was Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu  among women’s jersey sold. Polamalu was followed by Peyton Manning and Drew Brees, who rank fourth and second on the men’s list, respectively, according to stats from NFLShop.com.

The Dunham household has loved Troy Polamalu since he played for beloved USC Trojans.   Troy’s brother-in-lay and business partner Alex Holmes says that of Polamalu’s more than 2,222,349 likes on Facebook, 49 percent of his fans are female.

 

Marketing to Women: Five Lessons Learned from Olympics

This was the Year of the Woman at the 2012 Olympics, and there were marketing lessons to be learned by all of us.  But just to pause and enjoy the moment.  Consider this:  Women won 2/3 of America’s medals in the 2012 Olympics. If US women were their own country, they’d have placed fifth in the medal count standings. Most attribute this fact to Title IX.  Since President Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law in 1972, American educational institutions have been required to fund women’s sports in a way that’s proportional to the male/female breakdown of the school.

Importance of women as an Olympic audience.  Traditionally, the Olympics is the only major sports event that attracts audiences that are majority-female. The Gallup Daily tracking survey done by phone with 1,082 U.S. adults and taken Aug. 4-5 during the Olympics reported that  43% of women say they were watching a lot, while just 36% of men say so and only 30% of unmarried men.

Why is that true of the Olympics and not other sporting events?  Maybe we need a Title IX for households.  In a new study published in Communication, Culture & Critique, they found that “Women’s TV sports consumption habits were more mediated by their personal schedules than by team schedules or TV schedules.”  It seems that women’s role in the household trumps watching sports.  And when they do watch, they like the easy to follow narratives that Olympics coverage is famous for.  And while Title IX has increased the number of female athletes, it still hasn’t changed the audience for female sports.  That’s why women’s basketball has never reached the same level of success as men’s basketball.

Marketing to Moms Still Reigns.  Most of us know that P&G has taken their Proud Sponsor of Moms to new Gold status.  Procter & Gamble is looking to generate $500 million in sales from its massive marketing push centered on Olympic athletes and their moms.Global Brand Building Officer Marc Pritchard said it was an attempt to build a “perfect storm” of TV, digital, social and PR activity around closely followed events. It spans 34 brands and 150 sponsored athletes, with the “Thank you, Mom” concept that was first executed during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics serving as “the glue that ties it together to do multi-brand activations within retailers,” he said.  Moms were actually the glue.  The spots were so likable that you couldn’t get tired of them.

The mobile Olympics.  The times have changed dramatically in just four years.  Social media and events have a symbiotic relationship.  A blast back to 2008 – the iPhone was new, the app store had just launched, and the BlackBerry was the most popular smartphone.  And there was no iPad.  So in this Olympics, social media was propelled by mobile.  NBC, the athletes, the sponsors and the fans were all sharing on social media.   About 50% of streams from NBC came from mobile devices.  Data released in August by Twitter indicates that there were more than 150 million tweets about the Olympics during the course of the Games.   There’s a great infographic on Mashable that portrays the impact of social media in this year’s Olympics.  Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt was the big winner, with more than 960,000 mentions during the Games. American swimmer Michael Phelps took social silver with over 830,000 mentions.  Gabby Douglas went from 20,000 followers to 686,077 followers on Twitter.

Immediacy of today demands “real time ads”.    Marketers no longer have the luxury of planning a campaign and allowing it to run unchanged.   Today, marketers have to be in the moment to capitalize on events and sponsorships.  And yes, it can be exhausting but it is important.  Did you see the Visa or AT&T ads?   Commercials incorporated footage from events that had occurred just hours earlier, including the American women’s victory in gymnastics and Sanya Richards-Ross’ win in the 400-meter dash. The trend in the London Games toward “real time” advertising were marked by quickly produced commercials that enable advertisers to leverage the Olympics’ most buzzworthy moments.  The advertisers enjoyed special relationships with NBC that allowed them footage to these magic moments.  Brands were able to leverage their ties to the Olympics and increase their positive public perception at the same time.

Understanding your target and the use of ambush marketing.  Nike did a brilliant job in creating juggernaut exposure for the new Volt.  How could you not see those ubiquitous neon-yellow Volt shoes.  It seems that Nike passed on the official sponsorship and went straight to the athletes. Because we all want to be like Mike.  Their original brand strategy has never strayed from that original Michael Jordan advertising.  According to Nike, 41 athletes won medals wearing the shoes as of Friday, including 43% of track and field medalists.  Most people will tell you that they think Nike was the official shoe.  Seems rival Adidas reportedly paid $155 million to be an official London 2012 sponsor.  And if the shoes weren’t enough, didn’t you just love the spot with the 12 year old from London, Ohio, who slowly jogs toward the camera as the voiceover tells us that greatness “is not some precious thing … we’re all capable of it. All of us.”

The Olympics have been remarkable for all of us.  It brings America together, it makes new stars, it showcases our grit and pride, and it teaches how best to market.  I can’t wait for the Winter Olympics.

Marketing to Women: 10 Cool Ways to Use Pinterest

There is certainly a lot of buzz about Pinterest.  Of course, it’s popular, driving more visits than many hot social media sites.  It’s a women’s social medium – 70% women , most under the age of 45.  It’s fun, it commands users’ attention, but how as marketers do we use it to our advantage.  Here are some tips that might help you.

1.  Add a Pin It  or Follow Me button to your website and set up boards on your own Pinterest page.  Real Simple, the print magazine whose editorial embodies the Pinterest’s female-skewing demographic, has found huge referral traffic from Pinterest, beating out referrals from Facebook in the month of October 2011.”  Real Simple has 53 boards on Pinterest and 39,926 followers.  Nordstrom has 31 boards and 10,515 followers.  Pinterest is a top traffic driver for women’s magazines like marthastewartweddings.com, marthastewart.com, Cooking Light‘s website, Country Living and Style.

2.  Use Pinterest to promote a special offering.  Starting in February, Lands End is using Pinterest to promote their Canvas products.  The product site, www.landsendcanvas.com,will feature a “Pin It” button on product pages, providing shoppers a simple way to pin fashion finds directly onto their own Pinterest boards. Lands’ End Canvas recently launched a successful contest on the site. The Holiday Pin it to Win it contest asked Pinterest participants to create a virtual pin board featuring Lands’ End Canvas products for a chance to win one of ten $250 Lands’ End Canvas Gift Cards.

3.  Showcase interesting ideas and uses of your product.  Take the example of Kate, hair stylist and jewelry maker, who started her blog (thesmallthingsblog.com) only one year ago. For the first eight months, she had a grand total of seven readers.  But between August of 2011 and January 2012,  Kate has had over 10 million page views because of Pinterest. She pins photos of really attractive hair styles on Pinterest and directs them back to tutorials on her blog.   Kate has now gained 16,000 blog subscribers and 23600 Pinterest followers in just a few months.

4.  Use the Facebook connect to foster more social media interaction.  The site now connects with Facebook enabling users to automatically post new pins to their Facebook feed for others to see. This means more eyes from other channels get access to your pictures. However, for now, you still cannot connect Pinterest to your Facebook business page so you might want to have your brand ambassadors help you out.  You can also sign up through your business Twitter account, assuring that your pins are noticed on Twitter.

5.  Make your boards the best on a particular topic.  If you want to be known for a specific topic, you need to build the board with intent, curating great images or topics.  Make sure they follow your SEO strategy.  So your business is not a visual one, what to do?  Make sure your curate blogs around topics of interest to your target.  Maybe you have photos of your culture or projects or work styles.  What about infographics or data charts that support your premise?  What about great quotes or books that are pertinent to your business?  What about pictures of your customers, maybe enjoying your product.  You could encourage a guest gallery that others could pin to.  The Today Show has a special board with antics from their anchors to help develop personality.  Of course, they have an Oscars board posted today.

6.  Use Pinterest for research.  What a great place to be able to understand your customers likes.  It’s a delight to see what they pin and their “pins” might give you ideas for other product or service offerings.  See the infographic to see if your target audience is active on Pinterest.

7.  Celebrate with your followers.  Post a board that is specific to a holiday or an event.  Valentines ideas were all over Pinterest, but you could use a board to also support an upcoming conference or trade show.

8.  Link, Link, Link.  Don’t sell, but make sure that all of your relevant pins have descriptions that include a link back to your website, blog, landing page or video.  Also use hashtags that relate to boards you have developed.

9.  Non Profit Uses of Pinterest are huge.  Curate readling lists with books and blogs that are important to your cause.  Post photos that help support fundraising events.  Picture the many good things that you do on a page.  Use it to celebrate your important landmarks.

10.  Follow brands that you admire so you can learn from them.  We have mentioned several brands here that do a good job but there are many more.  Even Mashable has its own Pinterest page.  Etsy is doing an amazing job in curating ideas for their customers.  Whole Foods has a great page.  Who knows?  Maybe I will be talking about your Pinterest page soon.

Related articles

• 10 Most-Followed Users on Pinterest (gabrielcatalano.com)

Holiday Marketing to Women: Women Are Discount Shoppers

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More than half of all Americans (53%)  are going to purchase a toy this Holiday Season.  Even if you don’t have a child at home, you may be purchasing for a relative or friend

A newly released Harris Poll report has lots of good information on spending and types of toys being purchased, but the most interesting information was the difference in what men and women are buying and where they buy them. It seems that discount stores rule with Mom, and while Dad is buying at discount stores, he will also buy more toys online and at the big box toy stores.  Women’s preference for discount stores was also revealed in National Retail Federation 2010 holiday shopping data.  It seems that women are more frugal than men when it comes to holiday shopping, and women start their shopping earlier.  Of course, like a lot of research, we already knew that, but here are the numbers behind it.

	Total	Child in household		Gender
		With children	Without children	Men	Women
	%	%	%	%	%
Large discount store (such as Walmart or K-Mart)	54	55	54	48	61
Online	23	24	22	27	18
National toy store retail chain	11	11	11	14	8
Local, privately owned specialty toy store	5	6	4	5	5
Other location	6	4	8	6	7

	Total	Child in household		Gender
		With children	Without children	Men	Women
	%	%	%	%	%
Children’s books	43	50	38	41	46
Games for consoles	32	43	24	36	27
Board games	32	43	24	31	33
Dolls	26	33	21	25	27
Arts and crafts	29	35	24	27	30
Building blocks and bricks	22	28	18	24	20
Sports equipment	21	29	15	29	12
Handheld electronic games	20	28	14	23	16
Game consoles	13	23	6	16	9
Something else	31	36	27	27	35
Not sure	21	13	27	22	21

Men seem to be buying more sports and gaming related toys, while Mom is buying the books. I was a little surprised at this breakdown but men like to buy boy toys.  It’s the way it has been at our house.

When it comes to the amount Americans are spending, the recession still has an effect on holiday spending. While 44% say their spending will be no different than last year, over one-third (37%) say they will spend less than they did last year.  And 15% say they will spend more than they did last year.

Among toy buyers with a child in the household, almost one-quarter say they will (23%) spend more than they did last year, over one-third (36%) say their spend will be no different and two in five (41%) say they will spend less than they did last year.

 

Marketing to Women: Gourmet Tailgaters Spend More

Football tailgating conjures up images of smokin’ grills with all the basic foods – hot dogs, burgers and brats.  Football fans love to tailgate.  And as Americans get more sophisticated about food, so do our tailgating parties.

Now here’s a score you have got to love, no matter what your team.  According to the latest Weber Tailgating Study^™, one-half of today’s US tailgate grillers have gone gourmet before the big game.  Fifty percent of those surveyed report that they consider themselves to be either “gourmet” food grillers or “between a gourmet and a basics” food griller (22 percent and 28 percent, respectively).

Here’s the news for retailers:  While “basics” tailgate grillers spend an average of $441 in groceries per year for their parking lot parties, “gourmet” tailgaters spend an average of $1,001—a whopping 127 percent more. This comes out to an average of $106 per tailgate for the basics group vs. $165 among the gourmets.

What’s on the menu? Move over hot dogs and burgers.

Gourmet grillers rank their favorite four parking lot foods as chicken (43 percent), ribs (39 percent), brats (37 percent), and steak (33 percent) while basics grillers rank their favorite foods as hamburgers (70 percent), brats (45 percent), chicken (42 percent), and hot dogs (42 percent).  Gourmet grillers are also more likely to grill seafood as well.

How will you know the Gourmet Grillers?

They are the ones with the full-size grills and large parties.  Gourmet grillers tend to go all out compared with the basic grillers.  And they have an average of 20 people at their rocking party, compared with the 14 at the basic griller’s party.

Who tailgates? One out of eight people.  Using their smartphone.

Overall, 12.5 percent of Americans over age 18 have tailgated in the last 12 months—attending an average of 3.4 tailgates each. Those ages 24-34 are more likely to tailgate (19 percent), followed those ages 18-24 (17 percent), and then those ages 35-44 (16 percent).

Half of tailgaters are using their smartphone, for cooking tips, scores and checking in with fans.

Recession or not, we love our football!

We may have put off large purchases or that big vacation, but come Saturday or Sunday in the fall, we are at our grills for football season.  It’s a tradition that makes us feel good.  So a little splurge on ribs and brats to spruce up our party is an easy thing to do.

Marketing to Women: It’s Football in the South!

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This past weekend was a big one for football.   College football is finally in full swing with Saturdays consumed with football mania.  I was on a road trip this weekend and spent the day dialing around for games and using my iPad to update scores.

So it was no surprise to learn that a new Scarborough report shows the Southeastern Conference (SEC)* is the number one college conference for women who are avid fans of college football. About one-fifth (19 percent) of avid female college football fans** attended an SEC game, listened to one on the radio, or watched a game on television during the past year. The SEC outranks all other major college conferences for women who are avid fans of college football. Among all adults, 17 percent of avid college football fans are fans of the SEC.

Here’s the breakdown.  Scarborough Sports Ranking: Top Ranking Conferences for Women who are Avid Fans of College Football (Conferences are measured regionally)

1. SEC (19%)
2. Big Ten (13%)
3. ACC (12%)
4. Big 12 (10%)
5. Pac-10 (7%)
6. Big East (5%)

Who are these smart women?

Female SEC Football Fans represent a diverse, professional audience. They are 47 percent more likely than all adults to be African-American and 12 percent more likely to be employed in white collar positions. Professionally, they are 30 percent more likely than other adults to be in sales positions, and 15 percent more likely to have an office in the home. SEC female fans are average in terms of household income and education.

Marketing Opportunities

Female SEC Football Fans are 12 percent more likely than the average adult nationally to own their home and 22 percent more likely to own a second home, as well. Eighty percent live in a single-family home. Female SEC Football Fans fill their homes with high-end technology, such as:

• Energy saving appliances: Female SEC Football Fans are 14 percent more likely than all adults nationally to have an energy saving appliance in their household
• HDTV: 12 percent more likely
• Video game system: 12 percent more likely
• Satellite TV subscription: 17 percent more likely

Maintaining and upgrading the homestead is a priority, and they are more likely than other adults to take on big home improvement projects such as:

• Remodeling a Bathroom: Female SEC Football Fans are 23 percent more likely to have remodeled their bathroom during the past year
• Remodeling a Kitchen: 24 percent more likely
• Roof repair: 26 percent more likely

They also invest in cosmetic and other maintenance upgrades such as:

• Landscaping: 16 percent more likely to have done in the past year
• Painting or wallpaper: 12 percent more likely
• Heating or air conditioning upkeep or replacement: 33 percent more likely
• Installing a home security system: 54 percent more likely

Game on Saturday, Church on Sunday

This might be the statistic I like the best –  Female SEC Football Fans share their wealth. They are more likely than the average American to live in a household that contributed to a healthcare, social care/welfare or religious non-profit organization during the past year.

Women watch more sports than soap operas

The old stereotypes are dead.  Soaps are going down the drain.  When it comes to television, we are watching sports.  Whereas 62% of women surveyed say they watch sports regularly or occasionally on TV, 42% say they watch soap operas with the same frequency, according to BIGresearch’s Simultaneous Media Survey (SIMM 10, July 07) of 15,439 consumers.

Oh, by the way

The teams that I was interested in on Saturday?  Auburn, Houston, Southern Cal, Tennessee, Vandy.

And where are we on Saturdays?  We are watching television or at the game.  Every college student has a Mom who is hosting a tailgate party,  buying tickets, booking hotel rooms, buying merchandise and  snagging hot dogs at the game.