Vaseline For Men, Marketed A Woman’s Way
There is a marketing undercurrent gaining momentum as I type. Men are getting comfortable with the opportunities to walk a less linear path toward their purchase decisions, and more men’s brands are leveraging two strategies that have been so successful with women – engagement and community.
As per a recent MediaPost brief, Unilever’s Vaseline for Men brand (in cooperation with ESPN) is the latest to give it a go, at StrongerSkin.com. Let’s consider the women’s market angles in this campaign:
- Skincare has long been mainly a “women’s issue” in the U.S. Men who have been aware of skincare before now have been fewer in number, and usually more urban. It is only within, say, the last two years that the average American guy (dare I say Joe Sixpack?) has seemed to become a bit more comfortable with even the idea of this more feminine pursuit.
- Where men’s products that might be akin to “skincare,” like aftershave, have long been marketed mainly in terms of sex appeal, the wink-wink has faded into the background a bit. Now, we see a wider range of products marketed to guys who are motivated to keep their skin as fit as their bodies – for their own reasons (the sexy woman is nowhere to be seen in the Vaseline videos, for one).
- The marketing of these products isn’t just a picture of a man holding a bottle in a print ad or formulaic television campaign. Now, the short videos of sports stars being the men they are in real life, for the most part, are telling stories to which a lot of other men should be able to relate. Attempting to engage a guy like this for a few minutes is new for male-focused consumer brands (except for sports-specific media outlets, I realize).
- There’s a sweepstakes involved, and the site – which isn’t just the usual Vaseline site, but a very targeted mini-site – seems to have been designed with lingering in mind.
In the big picture of gender and marketing, women are most known to buy along a more complex, non-linear, path. Yet, this Vaseline for Men effort seems to be one of a few campaigns currently reaching out to men in that beyond linear manner. Changing times and new cultural pressures are influencing men to respond in kind. How else would they go from “what is skin cream” to “which brand of skin cream is right for me” in less than 60 seconds (OK – so I exaggerate)?
Men are shopping more, in general (mainly because they have started to take on more household tasks), and they are also using their more feminine brain traits in seeking engagement and community with the brands they buy. As I see it, they are joining women in expecting the above, beyond and around aspects of the brands they buy.
Will men visit StrongerSkin.com to hang out, sign up for the sweepstakes and possibly return for more? I’m not sure. But Unilever must have found a few reasons to give this approach a serious try.
Guys? What do you think?
