Is Male Bashing A Surefire Way to Market to Women?
We live in interesting times. Marketing to women is hitting its stride, and this is definitely progress, but in some cases reaching women seems to be attached to bashing men. Hmmm. Is that truly relevant to the majority of female consumers?
Television ad campaigns, and even full-on sitcoms, where the man is the bumbling idiot while the women is always right and withstands her husband’s ignorance only with a lot of eye-rolling, seem to be fairly common. This is where a big disconnect occurs, because either that scenario doesn’t reflect a woman’s personal situation or, if it does, she’s probably not to happy to be reminded about it.
Male or female-bashing, even in jest, has the potential to rub the wrong way for a lot of consumers. It’s a negative approach that doesn’t necessarily turn into a positive brand connection after the fact. Consider the heat Fidelity has taken for a number of their ads:
It is pretty clear that these ads were designed with women in mind, and that these situations may well resonate with women, at times. But, I’m wondering if this sort of theme and humor really works for the broader brand message. Is it worth alienating a fair number of men with an ad campaign in order to reflect that your commitment to and understanding of women?
Anyway -
Reaching women with relevance has finally become job 1 for a lot of brands. We’ve seen many great marketing to women examples in the beauty, fashion, auto, home repair, and financial industries, among many others. Still, evidence of pink thinking, the superficial approach to female consumers, abounds. In some ways, mean-spirited male-bashing can be considered thinking pink – in that it assumes (and “assumes” is the operative word) that women will find relevance in that tone.
The word of caution: Humor is very hard to get right for the very particular audience/customer you seek, and you should have a few layers of checks/balances in your marketing process before launching such a campaign.
Male, or female, bashing may not be effective in reaching the majority of your market, no matter its gender mix.
