Women and their Love-Hate Relationship with Brands

New Research Study Will Be Revealed at Red Letter Day.  Here’s a Preview.

Women have always had an ambiguous relationship with brands. Why? Women expect things that brands don’t deliver.

In at time, where marketers wax poetic about brand love, we are on a mission to find out what separates the famous love couple. Well, as they say, it’s complicated.

Brand Wise and Lipstick Economy just completed a study of 3,390 women representing the three most active buyer generations – Millennials, Generation X and Baby Boomers. We wanted to find out why 90% of women think brands don’t understand them.

And the results are fascinating. Women actually like to get information from brands. Only 13% of women are really annoyed at brands that are on social media. And more than 90% of women sign up for emails from brands.

Maybe women see shopping as part of their role in life. Women currently make 85% of all consumer purchases and they are the primary shopper for a myriad of expected categories like food and clothing. But women are the primary shopper of most categories, including 79% of healthcare decisions, 76% of travel and vacation decisions, 72% of housing decisions, 70% of restaurant decisions, 67% of financial decisions, and 53% of automotive decisions.

Our research shows that the biggest gap in this brand relationship tends to be over chronic issues: truth and accuracy, customer service, a realistic view of women, respect for women’s intelligence and an understanding of the multi-faceted lives women lead today.

I know this reads like a romance novel. The issues around trust run deep. Women expect deals, promotions, ideas and authenticity. So they seek out advice from their own experiences, friends and families and even online reviews.

To learn more about this research study and more ways that brands are hitting the market with women, sign up here for the Red Letter Day Marketing to Women Event, August 5 at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee.

 

Facebook Wants to Steal TV Dollars with TRP Buying

The space between television and online videos is narrowing. Facebook confirmed last week it is launching a new product to let advertisers buy Facebook ads based on Target Rating Points in hopes of getting a larger share of media dollars currently spent on TV.  

 The product named TRP buying is a nod to the time honored way of purchasing media, with target rating points in mind. Facebook has a partnership with Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings division to verify video ad performance in conjunction with TV spots.

The idea is that media planners can build a campaign across TV and Facebook with a TRP target in mind, based on Nielsen verification. The tool will allow TV campaigns to be extended and augmented through Facebook video ads.

And the results should be interesting. The Facebook blog post says that Facebook and Nielsen studied 42 U.S. campaigns and found a 19% increase in targeted reach when Facebook and TV ads were combined versus television along. When they looked just at Millennial consumers, the reach was 37% better.

Facebook also says that Facebook video impressions were two times more likely to hit their target audience than TV impressions. Of course, most of us know that Facebook has quickly become pay-to-play. Not surprisingly, since February, Facebook has seen a 25% growth in ad buyers.

Of course, the majority of consumers being targeted in Facebook are women. This year’s Pew study found online women are more likely than online men to use Facebook and Instagram. Some 77% of online women are Facebook users, compared with two-thirds of online men.

100 Years of Marketing History: The Birthday of the T-Shirt

The T-shirt is probably the most important marketing icon of the 20th and 21st Century and this year it turns 100 years old.  Most of us can chronicle our lives by our t-shirts.  We have drawers of t-shirts we can’t throw away.  Remember your first concert t-shirt, your first college t-shirt, your first career t-shirt, your first Bonnaroo t-shirt, your first protest t-shirt, your first Marathon t-shirt, your first American Apparel t-shirt.   T-shirts unite us and tell our story.

A measure of the power of your brand identity is how good it looks on a t-shirt.  It is also the symbol of the emotional connection of your brand, your organization or your event.  It’s the one piece of apparel that unites us in an amazing way.  Ask any parent that has traveled with a group of teenagers – those t-shirts are powerful identifiers.

The T-Shirt Facts

CustomInk recently commissioned a survey of 1,000 representative Americans over the age of 18 that revealed:

95% of Americans wear t-shirts
89% of t-shirt wearing Americans put on a tee at least once a week
9 in every 10 Americans (87%) own at least one t-shirt they refuse to “trash” because of sentimental attachment

Marketers have long loved the t-shirt.  In fact the history of the t-shirt certainly tells a marketing story.  T-shirts are marketing billboards, a personal expression of their passions, a novelty and a memory of past times.

In 1932, students started stealing USC t-shirts from the USC football team that said “Property of USC”.    The first political t-shirt was “Do it with Dewey”  for his 1948 presidential election.  T-shirts first became popular for everyday wear in the 1950s with the debut of Marlon Brando in the iconic white shirt in A Streetcar Named Desire.  James Dean added his own mark when he appeared in the t-shirt.  Woodstock gave us tie-dyed t-shirts.  Today, many notable and memorable T-shirts produced in the 1970s have now become ensconced in pop culture. Examples include the bright yellow happy face T-shirts, The Rolling Stones tops with their “tongue and lips”logo from the Sticky Fingers album, and Milton Glaser’s iconic “I ♥ N Y” design.

The “I ♥ N Y” design is supposedly the most popular t-shirt ever created. The t-shirt has come a long way since the first t-shirt appeared as standard-issue gear within the U.S. Navy in 1913.  The Navy wanted the lightest weight cotton undershirt they could find. Sailors quickly adopted it as standard attire without their uniform.

The Way To Belong

Research shows we have 13 t-shirts we hold on to for special reasons.  Psychologists say that customized t-shirts are a way to express ourselves in a world of mass markets – “we have infused the spirit of something greater into an object that is seemingly meaningless.”  They are the tribal costumes of today – a measure of belonging.  They become our modern coats of arms.   Here are some of my favorites:

• A Bowling Night shirt from one of my workplace events that says:  Just another night in the gutter with my friends

• A grey standard order Marines t-shirt that signifies my son’s entering the Marines

• Multiple USC t-shirts that represent the football games and parent weekends from my kids’ college days

• A Grammy Museum t-shirt that was from the opening of the LA museum where my daughter worked

• A Minnie Pearl t-shirt that celebrated her 100th birthday and all the laughs she provided us.

• A Simon and Garfunkel concert t-shirt

• Peace and Goodwill to Men t-shirt that I had printed for the Christmas season one year just because

• My “Old Bat” t-shirt that I wear every Halloween

Tell me what some of your favorite t-shirt are and why they are special to you.

Related articles

• The T-Shirt Turns 100 (forbes.com)

Five Questions Every Company Should Ask Itself

Sometimes we forget the basics.  And sometimes the greatest insights come from the truly hard questions.  Peter Drucker, the business guru you always meant to read, said “One does not begin with answers. One begins by asking, ‘What are our questions?’”

So here is my modest list of questions that all companies should ask of themselves.

1.  Why are we here?  As I counsel with companies, they spend a lot of time looking in the rear view mirror, rather than looking ahead.    Some companies may have lost their curiosity about the world around them.

Are they still relevant?  Pepsi obviously spent a lot of time working on a new bottle and label, but their true questions should be how do we continue to make beverages that are relevant to the younger generation.   According to Keith Yamashita of design consultancy SYPartners, we’re coming off an era of “small-minded questions” geared to efficiency: How can we do it faster, cheaper, where can we cut? “But in order to innovate today,” Yamashita maintains, “companies must ask more expansive questions.”

2.  What business are we in?  Many times I hear the truth of what business companies are in from their clients.  Recently, I was speaking to women about interior design.  Their interior design professional did not sell them interior products; what they sell is personal confidence and status.  The clients are buying an antidote to fear – fear of making an expensive or inappropriate mistake.  Wonderbra says, “We do not sell underwear. We do not sell lingerie. What we sell is self-confidence for women.” Harley Davidson does not sell motorcycles. It sells the concept of freedom to middle-aged men.  Xerox learned that they did not sell copies; they sold distribution of information.  What is the truth of your business?

3.  What are we doing, that our competition is not doing, that our customers want?  It is the classic positioning question, but it is also the key relevance question.  If all of a sudden, your clients feel that conspicuous consumption is not appropriate, you won’t be selling many obscenely lavish items.  If your competition is providing a higher quality product at a lower price, the consumer will find out.  The internet has made positioning more important than ever.

But do you offer such wonderful style and service that consumers just feel better about you?  Or do you have a cause like Toms that makes consumers instantly identify with you?

4.  What are we willing to give up or do differently?  Many companies are facing questions of ethics, technological change, generational issues and more that cause them to make really difficult decisions.  Whole Foods makes decisions every day based on issues of animal welfare, human harvesting of seafood, organic agriculture, food safety and sustainability.  They have a mission and are guided by it.  Companies like Chipolte and Starbucks are willing to give up business practices to embrace their mission.

5.  Where are we going?  Maybe the toughest question of all.  Because it implies that change is constant and that is a bummer for many.  Creating a culture of innovation is important for today’s world.  Take this example.  Kate Spade (if you don’t know who she is you are not a woman) has a new store concept in Japan.  Every Saturday, it releases an article of clothing you won’t find anywhere else. The goal is to make the store a weekly excursion for millennials who might otherwise be online shopping.  To overcome the high cost of replacing signage on Saturdays, a group decided to make all the signage digital on iPads.  Plus offer enough information to engage the millennials.  The store makes back the cost of the technology investment in just two months.  On the other side of the coin, online retailers like Warby Parker, eBay and Piperlime are trying out retail showrooms, still with an emphasis on online purchase.

Businesses moving from the 20th Century to the 21st Century have new and different challenges.  Asking questions is the beginning of a new future.

Related articles

• The 10 Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization (forbes.com)
• The 5 Questions Every Company Should Ask Itself (fastcodesign.com)