Marketing to Women’s Best Kept Secret? Relationship Books
What makes women and men behave the way they do or say what they say? This question gets to the “art” that gets neglected in the “science” of the marketing to women field. Interestingly, if you boil this idea down to its essence, it starts to look like marketers are too often using the linear/science route to reach a market that thinks/behaves more holistically/artfully. Argh – can the pursuit of the women’s market get any tougher?
But, help is on its way – and actually has always been there, patiently waiting for us to notice it: the answer is in personal relationship books. The longer I am in this field, the more I see these resources as a key to gender-focused marketing of any sort. The caveat? Reading them may make some people a little uncomfortable, as they perhaps see a bit of their personal lives reflected.
But, here’s why it may be worth the discomfort. In the relationship books I’ve used in my research, and no matter when they were published, I have found some big “a-has” for helping clients and audiences to absorb marketing to women truths. Consider the following:
You Just Don’t Understand:Women and Men in Conversation (orig. 1990) by Deborah Tannen. Just one insight from this, now classic sociolingual work: that men tend to communicate around status/positioning and women tend to seek connection in their conversations. If reading this book was the only guidance you had, you’d have learned something core to gender differences that truly apply in marketing.
How Can I Get Through To You: Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women (2002) by Terrence Real. One insight that may seem unrelated to marketing to women, but… think again: “For men to deliberately cross over into the despised realm of the ‘feminine’ defies the structure of patriarchy itself. When women cross the line into the ‘masculine’ domain, they reappropriate qualities the world holds in high regard.” Now THAT sheds new light on why the field of marketing to women has itself become a pink ghetto.
The New Male Female Relationship (orig. 1983) by Herb Goldberg. Just one insight that, again, has marketing to women implications: “A woman, therefore, can be just as macho as a man, and, by the same token, a man can have feminine defenses. It is the effect of these masculine and feminine defenses that produces interpersonal problems and distortions in awareness, not a person’s gender.” To avoid “thinking pink,” marketers, too, should take gender out of it – and consider the consumer’s masculine/feminine characteristics rather than their sex.
Finally, it was reading an Irish Times article about Himglish and Femalese: Why Women Don’t Get Why Men Don’t Get Them, the soon-to-publish book by UK author Jean Hannah Edelstein, that compelled me to write this post. Her younger generation and non-American perspective offers yet another angle for marketers to consider as they communicate with today’s men and women. As the reviewer wrote, based on her reading of the book: Successful women use Himglish. They don’t beat around the bush. They say what needs to be done, end of story. Successful men, on the other hand, are adept at Femalese, even with each other. The marketing implications here? That it is worth learning the other’s language – both for communicating with colleagues and for working together to develop messaging with a particular gender focus (or deciding if a particular gender focus is even necessary).
Now, before you go rolling your eyes, here’s my final pitch: In all cases, your marketing to women study must include the usual books, speakers, consultants, white papers and research. Also, you will be ever-so much wiser to also include your own direct interaction/communication with your customers via some sort of panel or advisory board. And, the third piece? Stepping back from the task at hand a bit further to understand what may make the entire situation “tick.”
Human behavior and gendered roles may well be getting in the way of your team doing its best work in speaking to and serving women. So, be brave – and start reading them at work!* Relationship books include “secrets” that will give your brand the advantage in leveraging marketing gender intelligence.
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*If that is just not going to happen at your office, let me know. I can brief your team on all I’ve learned that can be applied to your fresh marketing perspective.
