Learned On...

Defying Gender Stereotypes: One Ad At A Time

When I am asked for examples of great marketing to women efforts, I generally list past campaigns by American Express, Home Depot, Apple and Kleenex.  At face value, those brands are all non-gendered – but track their tactics and messaging and you see a lot of women’s influence. Therein lies … Read on >

Insight? It’s What You Need

“The act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing something intuitively.” This is the second definition of the word “insight” from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 10th Edition.

And, right now, it is what marketers need.

Newly released research from The Marketing Executives Networking Group and … Read on >

Insights You Can Use: The Demanding Wine Consumer

New consumer research just released by Women & Wine proves that you can glean insights about your market from many places.  And, after so recently writing about the “new info shopper” – it is all the more likely that your customers share some qualities with today’s more … Read on >

The Expert Panel: Biggest Trend in Marketing to Women?

And, the biggest trend in marketing to women as we enter 2009 is… drumroll please… putting out a press release about forming a women’s market expert panel.   Does that really deserve fanfare?

To me the news occurs when said organizations or brands can point to a successful six-month old (or older) … Read on >

Saturn: A “Woman’s Way” Business Model Before Its Time

The American automobile industry situation is indeed tragic, and at this point there is not much more to say. Still, I had always held out hope for the original Saturn “way.” That GM brand’s initial concept and launch is a great example of serving car customers “in a woman’s … Read on >

Serving The Simplifier

I like the sound of the Simplifier, a psychographic recently defined by John A. Quelch and covered by Iconoculture. This person is:

“…a middle-aged affluent looking to downsize during the downturn because she wants to, not because she has to (Harvard Business Publishing 10.15.08).”

While the Simplifier may … Read on >

Finding Consumer Common Ground, Part I: Storytelling

The same old ways of segmenting consumer markets have not worked for a while, but many a marketer has continued to default to the easy way out (and then wondered why the effort didn’t quite connect with consumers). But, maybe – just maybe – this economic downturn has forced … Read on >

Are You Talking “To” Or “With” Customers?

Whenever the buzz gets so loud you can’t hear yourself, that’s a good time to step back and take a look at what’s really going on. As the number of branded “social networking” sites seems to grow by the hour – consider Samsung’s just announced laundry-related “Moms Like … Read on >

Best Buy Evolves

By now, most of you have heard or read the news that Best Buy has opened a new store in Aurora, Colorado, with a lot of changes that were inspired by women (both internally and externally). What I love about this story is that it shows how the … Read on >

Think Design: Brand-Consumer Interaction On A Whole New Level

After interviewing Donald A. Norman, author of Emotional Design (and other great books on the topic) for my 9 Minds On Marketing eBook a few years back, I was sold on pursuing a more design-oriented way of thinking and writing. A recent BusinessWeek article by … Read on >