More than Half of Women Are Now Primary Breadwinners

New news. It used to be that 40% of women in married households were the primary breadwinner. Now, more than half of American women are the primary breadwinners in their households and many of them are worried about financial matters. Results from the Center for American Progress show that 63% of mothers were primary, sole or co-breadwinners for their families. Sounds like good news?  Well, not so quick.

Sounds like good news? Well not so quick. The fact that women are bringing home a significant portion of their families’ incomes does not mean that there is gender parity in the workforce, nor does it mean that working parents and caregivers have the supports they need. Issues such as the gender wage gap and lack of policies such as universal paid family and medical leave, paid sick days, and workplace flexibility still hold women back from reaching their full economic potential.

Families in the United States look different than they did a generation or two ago. Married couples today are less likely to have children than they were in the past, and single-parent households are also much more common. In 1974, a married couple headed 84% of all families with children, while in 2015, only about two-thirds, or 65.5%, of families with children were headed by a married couple. And from 1974 to 2015, the rate of families with children headed by a single mother nearly doubled—from 14.6% to 26.4%—while the rate of single fatherhood quadrupled from 1.4% to 8.1%.

Gift Giving Benefits Retailers Two Times

Gift giving is an important part of retail sales.  It also represents an emotional bond made between the giver and the recipient.  Retailers should recognize the dual rewards in growing their gifting business because you are touching two targeted consumers at the same time – the purchaser and the recipient.  Gift giving strategy can provide exponential results for marketers if done correctly.

Unity Marketing estimates that $1 out every $10 spent in the typical retail store, (general merchandise, apparel, furnishings and others) is spent to buy a gift. Gifts represent approximately $128 billion in spending in 2017.  Consumers are typically buying a gift every one to two months.

So what’s behind the science of giving?  The act of gifting is typically meant to communicate feelings for and with another, fostering stronger social relationships.  New research by the Wharton School looked at what type of gifts build deeper personal relationships, a material gift or an experiential gift.

Experiential gifts win over material gifts

Despite gift givers’ tendencies to give material possessions, material gifts do less to foster meaningful relationships between gift givers and gift recipients. The researchers report, “Experiential gifts, in contrast, make recipients feel closer to the person who gave them the gift, regardless of whether the experience is consumed together with the gift giver. Experiential gifts have this effect because of the emotion they evoke when consumed, particularly when the emotion is shared.”

“Our findings demonstrate that giving experiential gifts is more effective at fostering closer relationships, and therefore implies that gift givers should feel happier as a result of giving an experiential gift compared to a material gift,”

What are experiential gifts?  An experience could be providing services like a meal, spa outing, horseback riding, or vacation.  But don’t dismay – material gifts can offer experiential aspects – candles, music, books, toys, food and drink items and even things that are nice to the touch – a furry throw, a cashmere pillow or silk pajamas.

Even the actual event of purchasing the gift can be experiential in a story setting or online by telling a story, allowing for touch and feel, and conjuring up warm feelings.

 

Marketers, Who You Gonna Call? Women “Ghostbusters”

The new “Ghostbusters” opened this summer to rave reviews and high attendance.  It deserves a round of applause for its boldness and all-star female cast including (left to right at top) Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Kristin Wiig and Leslie Jones.

It’s a little overdue for the new trend to put women in the lead roles in movies.  Because – women bought 50% of all movie tickets in the U.S. last year according to the MPAA.   National CineMedia (NCM) reports the Millennial women 18-34 movie audience jumped 61% from 2013 to 2016, while women 18-49 also increased by 42%. Also, NCM’s ratings for women 18-34 jumped from 6.2 to 9.2 against the top 15 television networks. That’s a 48% surge in ratings growth since 2014 — with significant increases year over year.

Much of this growth is due to the success of movies like “Bridesmaids”, “The Help”, “Hunger Games” and “Star Wars”.  The first “Hunger Games” movie blew the doors off the box office, bringing in $408MM+. The following year, “Hunger Games: Catching Fire” was  breaking records and finding itself atop the heap as the No. 1 film of the year ($424MM+).  Last year, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” introduced a new female hero in Rey (Daisy Ridley), while giving homage to General Leia Organa (formerly Princess Leia) as both a leader and a mother. Broadening the movie’s box office appeal by having such a strong draw for multiple generations of women — and providing role models for young girls — was certainly a factor in its huge success.  “Star Wars:  The Force Awakens” is now the high-grossing movie of all time, with over $936MM+ in domestic box office alone.  Even if Disney left female actions figures out of the line-up until social media highlighted the omission.

Once again, women are leading the way in consumer purchases from everything from household items to entertainment.  Hollywood seems to have embraced the power of strong women characters in movies.

So what’s next?  Rebecca Eldridge from NCM gives us a little preview:  “In 2017, look out for a highly-anticipated live action version of “Beauty and the Beast,” the comedy “Mother/Daughter” starring Amy Schumer (possibly joined by Goldie Hawn in her first movie since 2002), “Fast 8” featuring Charlize Theron making waves as the sole villain, and more. And looking even farther ahead, there are all-female versions of “Ocean’s Eleven” and “21 Jump Street” in the works, a remake of the cult favorite “Road House” with Ronda Rousey in the role made iconic by Patrick Swayze, and a girl-power spinoff of “Suicide Squad” featuring many of the female heroes and villains of DC Comics.”

Marketers, now is a great time to look to cinema advertising to meet your consumer where they play – at the movies.

 

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.

 

The End of Shrink It and Pink It

There was a time when brands would slap an overly obvious pink color on something they intended for women. Think power tools, football jerseys, ballpoint pins, razors. Oh, wait. It is still happening, although not as often as before.  Washington Post had a great article on the subject.

Bridgette Brennan, author of Why She Buys, says “Pink is not a strategy, unless you’re raising money for breast cancer research.”

It’s not that women don’t want products targeted to them. But in today’s world, women don’t want stereotypes. It’s a much more subtle type of targeting, like recognizing that women drink beer like Amy Schumer in Bud Light spots. They want a more representative view of society today.

And they don’t expect to see women in all the ads targeted to them. Moms like to see a Dad who likes his kids and is involved in their lives. Like those great Cheerios ads or a Dad who gets excited about a Swiffer.

Cultural stereotypes take time to change, but we are beginning to see a little more representation.

A Special Marketing to Women Event in Nashville

Marketers tell us they desire more relevant information on marketing to women today. So we decided to devote August 5 to a one-day event around the new narratives about marketing to women. We call it Red Letter Day because the important days on the calendar are always marked in red!

By the way, women control 85% of all consumer purchases yet 90% of women think that marketers do not understand them. And some 80% of all new products fail.   Think there is a correlation there?

Red Letter Day will host amazing speakers, provide great information and allow time for sharing insights.  Our new 2016 Lipstick Economy Love Hate Brand Study will provide insights on media, brand interaction and purchase influences.

Yes, men are welcome. This is not a women’s empowerment event. This is a marketing event for those who are charged with marketing to women or communicating with women. Those who will benefit are individuals in marketing roles, brand managers, business owners, entrepreneurs and those charged with internal or B2B communications to women.

We wanted this day to be special with new insights from some great marketers to women. We will be talking about practical solutions for communicating with busy women and understand what convenience really means. We will hear brand stories from vital and relevant brands reaching women in interesting ways. We will learn more about having authentic and meaningful conversations with consumers. And we will learn from some new research on women and why they feel misunderstood.

Two Days of Information in One Day! You don’t like long presentations and neither do we, so we will have great Ted-like presentations from our speakers with time for real conversation and interaction.

For more information on the event and a special discount for early registration, click here.

Super Bowl 50 Ads. Proof Women Respond Differently.

Neilsen research shows there are significant differences in how men and women think, react, shop and watch.  Understanding how these differences can drive behavior can help marketers create more effective advertising and marketing campaigns.  Something Super Bowl 50 advertising clearly illustrated.

A Look at the Super Bowl 50 Ads

This year many of the ads appealed directly to women featuring racing dachshunds (my favorite), Doritos shopping dogs, Super Bowl babies and Hyundai’s spots featuring first dates and distracting men.   Spot Trender did interesting research comparing several spots for gender appeal.

In a head to head playoff with Hyundai and Acura, Hyundai did a better job.  The Hyundai spot featuring Ryan Reynolds showed a car that didn’t get distracted like the women driving it.  Women loved this spot.  But a few men (13%) were offended by it, or maybe just a little jealous of Reynolds.  Acura’s “What He Said” ad for the Acura NSX was all rock music, special effects and speed.  It was liked less than the Hyundai ad by both genders but clearly less than females.

The Death Wish coffee spot featured Vikings in a masculine approach to advertising coffee, even using the line “fiercely caffeinated”.  The spot did well with men but the Starbucks ad showing a mom making her Starbucks on a lazy weekend morning did much better with women and did well with men as well.

Contrasts in Men and Women Brains

Nielsen says that while male and female brains may look alike on the outside, there are contrasts in how men and women process information, express emotion, interact with others and ultimately approach their daily activities that involve media and shopping.

Gender Differences

Women are hardwired for:

• Big-picture thinking
• Multi-tasking
• “Gut” reasoning
• Social and verbal skills
• Worry/Empathy

Men are preconditioned for:

• Concrete thinking
• Goal-oriented tasks
• Logical solutions
• Competition/defense

Differences in Advertising Appeal

When looking at advertising, women under 35 like ads that are upbeat, aspirational, celebrity-focused, occasionally silly, but never mean-spirited.  Women 35-54 may respond more favorably to messages that are sentimental, highlight real-life activities, family friendly and relatable.  Men are looking for fast acting movement, competitive activities and often, sadly, suggestive humor.

 

Tying this together, we see shopping patterns emerge.  Men are goal-oriented shoppers.  They shop to win or complete a goal.  Women are more likely to browse around and shop for deals and special offers.  Research says women are more attuned to discount and promotional news than men (men 57% vs. women 62%).  Women might head to a factory outlet with name brands while men might go to the department store and pay full price.  A few years ago, J.C. Penney learned an expensive lesson on the importance of promotions when they eliminated sales, promotions and coupons and drove away their core audience.

Marketing should employ creative elements and styles that resonate with the way the female brain works. Emotion wins the day over logical facts every time.  That doesn’t mean women don’t want information; they will seek out the information after they become interested.   Women also appreciate authenticity, social consciousness, and nuance.   The female brain is programmed to maintain social harmony, so messaging shouldn’t focus on conflict.

“Women relate to a more aspirational approach, connecting with happy situations that feature characters who allow a woman to imagine herself in their shoes,” says the report. Men like the offbeat humor embodied by “normal guys” in exaggerated situations.

Frequency of advertising also plays into gender receptivity.  Women can absorb more information in a 30-second ad than men but they are harder to convince, often only deciding to buy after multiple exposures.

 

Rey from Star Wars is Our New Girl Crush

Disney seemed to think that only boys want action figures so our new crush Rey was left out of the toy line-up for the  newest Star Wars movie.  Guess those toy makers forgot who buys toys for their children. The dominant toy shopper is female.  A social media campaign brought the omission to light, so now you can buy Rey toys.

We asked Girls To The Moon founder Courtenay Rogers her take on the Star Wars Rey and here’s what she offered.

“I’m extremely late to the Star Wars bandwagon. Like, over 30 years late.

My brother saw all of the movies when we were kids but I had no interest in watching movies so I missed the excitement the first time around, though we had every toy imaginable in our house. I never really got around to watching the famous movies until I realized my daughter wanted to see them so we decided to spend some quality time understanding what the fuss was all about.

The “original” three movies were very intriguing to watch, especially from an 8-year old’s perspective. She couldn’t stop talking about how old fashioned they were and even at 37, the difference between cinematography in the late 1970’s and 1980’s amazed me. The plots were interesting and the stories were compelling, but I didn’t end up a huge Star Wars fan. But then we saw the 7th film, The Force Awakens.

This movie is exceptional and my absolute favorite part is the addition of Rey, who is basically the main character (in my opinion) and made such an impression on me that I want to watch all of the movies again. Rey is a badass. Plain and simple. She is strong, intelligent, driven, powerful and independent. She is everything I strive to be and everything I want my daughter to strive for as she grows up. Yet, when merchandise started appearing to promote the movie and even after it was released, Rey was nowhere to be found.

A set of Hasbro figurines that were created to coincide with the release of the film didn’t include the heroine and fans took to social media to express their outrage.  The #WheresRey hashtag on Twitter took off, targeted at figurines that includes Chewbacca, Finn and Kylo Ren but excludes Rey, the female protagonist of the film played by Daisy Ridley. The film’s director JJ Abrams even joined the conversation saying that this was “preposterous and wrong” while addressing the Television Critic’s Association in early January.

Forbes reports that “the assumption underlying each of these promotional choices discounts women’s buying power. Earlier this year, the MPAA released its annual breakdown of movie audience demographics, revealing that women constituted 52% of moviegoers in 2014. This trend, the study further explains, has prevailed since 2010. And though the highest-grossing films in the United States and Canada skewed 59 percent male with Guardians of the Galaxy, the second-place position went to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, whose audience was 57 percent female. And the movie was fronted by a woman. Since Star Wars — also featuring a female lead — is expected to break all kinds of records in a year that’s seen more than a few flops, it’s a fair guess that women will be a large part of the audience.” Read the full article here.

I’m officially a Star Wars convert solely because of Rey and I hope to see many more characters like this one on the big screen. She’s a wonderful role model for young girls and older girls alike, and she deserves the same amount of fanfare as the rest of the characters in the film. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, get some friends together and make a girl’s night out of it. You will leave feeling like you can save the universe, all by yourself.”

 

Marketing to Women: Why Shopping Local is Important

Linda Berry, Bella Linea Owner

Shopping local is more than a trend. It is growing for several reasons. Shopping local is good for business, good for the environment and good for our desire to find one-of-a-kind, meaningful products.

Good for Business

Local shopping is not insignificant. In a world of online shopping and big box retailers, the 23 million independent stores in America account for 54 percent of sales. These independent stores provide 55 percent of jobs, and 66 percent of all net new jobs since the 1970s.

One study says that local business generates 70% more local economic activity per square foot than big box retail. Keeping dollars in the local economy has been the rally cry for small business. My friend Linda Berry, owner of fine linen store Bella Linea in Nashville, Tennessee, recently shared some of the facts with her customers to reinforce the importance of keeping dollars in her community. She shared statistics showing that for every $100 spent at a locally owned store, $45 remains in the local economy, compared with about $13 per $100 spent at a big box and almost zero for online shopping.

A movement around Shopping Local has begun. American Express founded Small Business Saturday in 2010 to encourage consumers to visit small businesses in their community as part of the after Thanksgiving shopping. This year shopping local has grown double digits. A report from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and American Express – the Small Business Saturday Consumer Insights Survey – revealed that 88 million consumers “shopped small” this year, up 14.9 percent from just a year ago.

Good for Our Need for One-of-A-Kind Finds and One-of-A-Kind Experiences

Many retailers like Linda Berry also talk about the importance of meeting needs for today’s shoppers. Linda spends time traveling to find and create one-of-kind products that her customers can’t find anywhere else. Services like free designer consultation and free gift wrapping make small businesses like Bella Linea stand out among the mass marketers.

Trends like eating local and the Maker Movement also continue to provide unique goods and experiences that meet the desires of today’s consumer. The Maker Movement really captures the group of people creating individually made pieces for the home, small-batch food products, hand-knit, handmade and hand crafted items that can’t be mass produced.

Food has gone local with independent restaurants, local food purveyors, handmade food products and farmers markets proliferating.   Beyond the food, food experiences have become custom as well. There are food tours, hands-on cooking lessons and small batch wine classes.

Good for the Environment

And, surprisingly, shopping local is also good for the environment.   Shopping locally helps cut down on processing, packaging and transportation waste, leading to less pollution and less fuel consumption.

So, with just a few days of the shopping season left, visit a local store and make a difference in your community.

Marketing to Women: More than a Number

I don’t often talk about a single television spot but the Special K “More than a number” campaign has generated a spot that really defines women as more than sizes or numbers.  Special K and their agency Leo Burnett actually created a pop-up store for women buying jeans.  The proposition is real.  Women fear only one thing more than shopping for jeans and that is shopping for a swimsuit.  They talk about depressing feelings related to the shopping experience.  Every woman I know talks about fat jeans, comfortable jeans and skinny jeans, but Special K has tried to change the language.

Hidden cameras capture women as they are shopping in the pop-up store.  A surprising thing happens when they find out there are no sizes on the jeans.  Their whole attitude changes when they find out that the jeans are not sized in numbers but in words like “fabulous”, “confident”, and “radiant”.  The women were free from numbers and were affirmed that they were beautiful.

As women, our self-esteem and confidence is enhanced when we are not tied to old tapes we play in our head.  And advertising can play a role in establishing new self affirming roles for women.

Research shows that if we feel more attractive, we are more confident.  Jane Risen, an associate professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, says  “The most relevant study that comes to mind for me is a classic study looking at self-fulfilling prophecies,” she said. Men and women had a 10-minute conversation, via headphones and microphones so they couldn’t see each other. Before the chat, the men were given fake pictures, so half of them believed they were talking to an attractive woman, and the other half an unattractive woman.

“The most remarkable finding was that an independent set of coders who listened only to the women (and didn’t see a picture) also thought that the women who were supposedly more attractive were more friendly and sociable,” Riser said. “In other words, being perceived by the men as attractive lead the women to act differently such that other people came to believe the same thing that the men believed.”