Women Really Do Wear the Pants

The other day, we had the pleasure of speaking to a crowd at the Business and Technology Expo, hosted by the Small Business Times. Our presentation followed Blue Ocean Strategy author Renee Mauborgne's discussion on how to make the competition irrelevant. If you haven't already read her book, please do. It'll get you thinking.

Our topic was “How Advertisers Can Compete in an Era of Exploding Media Options ." Here are some excerpts. We welcome your comments and insights.

Whatever you are selling, be it business-to-business or business to consumer, be it deer rifles, off road vehicles, auto insurance, aluminum siding, beer in cans or industrial power transmission equipment, eventually and most assuredly, a woman is your target market. Well, maybe not for the industrial power transmission equipment. Yet.

In 1950, one-third of American women of working age had a paid job. Today, almost two-thirds do. Service jobs have particularly expanded, creating opportunities for women.

Using these new jobs and the revenue generated from them, women are taking on more importance as consumers, entrepreneurs and managers. And by the way, studies are showing them to be better than men as investors as well.

“Surveys suggest that women make perhaps 80% of consumers’ buying decisions – from health care and homes to furniture and food.” -- The Economist, April 15th, 2006

The future, in terms of productivity, prosperity and yes even in higher fertility rates, the more women work, the better off we are. If you’re an advertiser, best get on the bandwagon. Or, you can prepare for the future in another way, which is what my son chose to do. He’s going to cooking school.

To quote The Economist again, “it used to be said that women must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily that is not so difficult.”

Let me close with this idea.

As I dug into all the articles and books and blogs about “the future of advertising,” I developed a slight case of déjà vu. I saw a disturbing trend, perhaps a fundamental mistake repeating itself albeit in different verbiage:

“The world is awash in advertising clutter. For decades, marketers have been spending more and more to try to get their message out, only to find their pitches drowned in a sea of noise…”

David H. Freedman
Inc. Magazine, August 2005

Well, if you’re like me, you’ve been hearing this since Hank Aaron set a home run record honestly. Woe is us! We have been flooded with noise and no one will listen to our back-to-school specials! We’d better make the logo bigger. We’d better say the name again. We’d better buy the rights to “Sweet Home Alabama.”


As you face your media choices, I would ask you to consider this: Clutter doesn't matter. Content Matters.

I think the issue of too many messages is a non-issue.

This generation has grown up with marketing like Daniel Boone grew up with the sounds of the forest. The problem is not clutter. It doesn’t matter whether you’re videopodcasting or e-mailing. If you don’t have content which is based upon insight into your participant, you won’t make the right media choice. Because they’ll all be wrong.

Understand who you’re talking to. If you know what they need to hear, have no fear…they will hear you.