One – pay attention to how some smart retailers are now committing, and marketing differently to, the specific niche of Hispanic women.

According to this AdAge piece by Laurel Wentz, Kmart is launching a new social media effort highlighting Latina bloggers. The program sounds like it will very cleverly leverage Twitter and Facebook community building and also possibly partner with an educational foundation in the future (which would be a very wise move…).  Key words for sustainability communicators? Hispanic, women, social media.

Two – pay attention to what could be called gendered or sexist language.

Most of you know this is always on my radar because of my marketing to women background, but this particular reminder was gathered via the NYT’s obituary (of all places) of Kate Swift, a co-author of The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing. For one, beware of the generic use of “man” (as one of that book’s Amazon reviewers notes).  What if the readers or receivers of your messages were mainly women – because that may well be the case, right now.  Key words for sustainability communicators? gender, sexist, language, women.

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Moral of my weekend story?  If your sustainability filter is always turned on  – even if it’s just idling in the background – your brain will self-select and highlight tidbits of news that may well benefit your company’s communications strategies.  All of you reading this are primed to guide the leading edge of sustainable business practices in your respective industries. In that regard, there really is a lot of news you can use.

A lot of people don’t relate to or put up with patriarchy in their daily lives.  Many consumers/citizens are also trying to live personal lives and work for companies that focus a bit more on sustainability.  So, what are brands doing about it?

My latest HuffingtonPost contribution compares the findings in a new Catalyst report on how to engage men with gender initiatives to what I see as a difficulty in engaging conventional business thinkers with sustainability.  In the piece, I cover a few of the points of myth/reality in both of those cases.

Here’s my conclusion:

The point is not to polarize the conventional and sustainable business mindsets away from one another. That gets us nowhere. Instead, the point is for all of today’s business thinkers to innovate as they always have, but to do so within exciting new parameters that serve planet, people and profits.

Just like the marketing to women advice I often give: shut up about it, but do it! If the term “sustainability” makes business decision-makers uncomfortable, don’t mention it. Just embrace the inevitable, commit to integrating sustainable development in to your business, and join today’s wise and innovative business pioneers.

So, in the case of the recent DoubleX announcement, Matt Haber, the writer of the Portfolio piece cites a few other examples of women-focused sites that have been successful and why their editors think that is the case.  His piece also includes reference to an earlier American Prospect article by Ann Friedman, wherein – to me – lie the key points.  Those include:

If Slate saw a demand for more content about women, why didn’t it start publishing more articles for and by women on its main site? The decision to devote micro-sites to groups that aren’t white men — The Root for black readers, Double X for women readers — implies that Slate recognizes the need for more coverage that caters to women and people of color. But it doesn’t want that coverage mucking up its main product.

And, a little bit further along:

Even if men are interested and clicking, the problem with branding certain types of articles “for women” is that it still advances a false gender divide. We can all agree that men parent, too. Men and women care about fashion and follow Hollywood gossip. Yet when these articles are primarily housed under a logo that refers to female chromosomes, it perpetuates the false idea that women are interested in Forever 21 and Facebook but not torture hearings or health-care reform.

I could basically paste in the whole piece, but suffice it to say, it is worth a read and very comprehensive in laying out the evolution and demise of some well-known “women’s” sites.  Where was the reader in all this? Did the magazines/sites consider that in their development?  Some things to ponder:

1) Does the reader visit a site because she is a woman and so seeking specifically “womanly” information (diets, sex tips, fashion)?  Or, is she headed to your site instead as a human being interested in the topics of the day, politics or news?

2) Does the publication care more about developing great programs for advertisers rather than what the heck will bring a reader to the site in the first place (like – content)?

3) Is there no way this poor woman who is your “target” will ever see the site’s great tips or click on certain ads if she doesn’t see a “for women” sign of some sort directing her to that information?

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Since (clearly) this topic of “women’s” magazines/sites can get me riled, and because it can serve as such a great marketing to women case study, I offer up two examples:

ESPN The Magazine (whose online version, apparently, recently got folded into Insider) – This publication could easily have created a “womens’” version, but instead the editors/publisher realized the core market was crazed sports fans – no gender about it.  That’s why you’ll see everyone from football players to female snowboarders on the cover, and reports on a wide variety of sports-related news within the pages.  ESPN The Magazine readers  like sports and sports writing, plain and simple.

Esquire Magazine – This magazine is labeled a men’s magazine and doesn’t overtly “market to women” at all.  In fact, plenty of women might find it a tad offensive.  Except, like the comment so many men have made about Playboy (“I read it for the articles”) – the editorial appeals to a certain group of women.  The magazine always includes extremely well-written feature articles (in my opinion) on all sorts of topics.  Yes, I’m a fan.  Check out the letters to the editor section, which usually includes at least one or two from women who seem to love the magazine. Esquire serves men and women alike who respond to that particular sense of humor, who are attracted to those sorts of in-depth articles and that appreciate writing talent.

For marketers, the point is to keep checking yourself and your efforts.  Do women happen to be avid users, readers, consumers of your product as well as men?  When women do buy your service or gizmo, is it because it speaks to their “womanly” ways or it speaks to their human interests or their style of humor, design interests, or functional needs…?

I suggest the default should be to market to women transparently (not overtly), as some of these magazine sites seem to be discovering.  Be guided and inspired by what women want and how they want it, but there’s usually no need to mention that that’s what you are doing.  If it boils down to the fact that you sell women’s razors and have designed one that specifically functions for the way women use them, have at it with the “women’s” stuff – but even still, don’t go overboard.

News and products that appeal to and resonate authentically with women ARE more necessary now than ever.  Just think twice before you “for women-ize.”

Why did Fislar’s piece catch my eye today?  Because of the truth in his closing paragraph:

If competitive instincts aren’t hardwired into the male mind, there may be hope for us to find a balance between the Khasi and Maasai ways of socializing the next generation (though social norms are very slow to change). At a minimum, we can work harder to equip young women with the knowledge and skills to compete in what remains a man’s world. But perhaps the problem isn’t one of female passivity—many have claimed that if women ran the world, there wouldn’t be any wars, and anyone who has read testosterone-driven Wall Street accounts like Liar’s Poker, or more recently House of Cards, might question whether all-out competition is the best way of managing our economy. If competition is nurture rather than nature, perhaps we’d all be better off if we lost a little of our warrior instincts.

Often, when gender differences are discussed, the presumption is that the answer to all our problems would be if women would just learn to be more like men.  Yet, we have entered an era where more and more, from leadership skills to investment savvy, the equation goes the other way.

Yet – I will not say that men need to, or should strive to, be more like women in this era.  Rather, the point is that much of what we just blindly accept these days about sexism, as well as the other “-isms,” is plain, old stereotype or assumption-based.

Let’s get with some critical thinking people!  Specifically with regard to these supposed gender differences, if competitiveness is what will make the world a better place, we can all nurture that in ourselves or the teams we manage.  If, however, and as I suspect is the case, the opposite of competitiveness may be key to forwarding a productive society today (especially if the big picture is toward more sustainable practices), aren’t we obligated to nurture those qualities in those who currently lack them?

The lazy way out is to assign all our gender relations issues to nature’s way rather than nurture’s way.  Yet, that really isn’t “just the way it is,” in so many cases.  How great is it to know that we actually have the opportunity to expand our human horizons, and learn new traits, no matter our gender!

There are not nearly as many natural obstacles to developing into more productive people than we’d all let ourselves believe.  And, the “nurtural” challenges are ours alone to address.

The reverse mentoring programme, which was piloted for six months in the EMEA region last year, aims to give male bosses an insight into the challenges women face in the workplace, helping more women into senior roles. Participants in the pilot met at least once a month, usually off-site to allow both sides to be more objective.

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My advice? Read the article and get ideas for doing the same in your organization or corporation.  If helping more women into senior roles isn’t a compelling enough reason (!), what about helping the participating senior male executives learn a bit more about how women think, process and make decisions in order to give them fresh perspective on their core consumers?

Believe me.  There’s a wealth of information and insight into how women buy within the workplace thought processes of your female colleagues – and it doesn’t involve hiring a research firm!

Dell’s UK program sounds like it should set up a great environment for men and women to make strides in workplace gender relations.  The bonus: their teams, men and women, mid-level and senior together, will very likely make better marketing decisions, as well.

Note to Dell – I’d love to hear the results, and help tell the positive stories when the results can be measured!

*Thanks to TheNextWomen for the twitter tip.

I guess when you have a clubby, tightly-woven, self-perpetuating network, it’s hard for women to break in. It’s a stubborn phenomenon, but I hope we can figure out how to correct it. Otherwise, our industry is tragically losing out on 50% of the world’s best talent!

2) I often write about how important it is to learn the language of the consumer in order to better reach him or her. And, this language lesson seems still more important in our 24/7 too-busy-to-listen world.  That’s why Vanessa Van Petten’s site, Radical Parenting, caught my eye.  How great for parents of teens to find help understanding their kids, not through famous psychologists and researchers – but through the words and ideas of teens themselves!

3) Innovative businesses (often of the “green” or socially responsible leaning) are known to pop up pretty frequently in my region of Vermont, and I recently came across another. Inlu was co-founded by two women who noticed, among other things, that a lot of moms now striving to live more green lives had significant conflict about the number of darned birthday party gifts (with wrapping!) they had to buy on an annual basis.  What they’ve developed is a fun online invitation, cause giving and group gift solution that speaks a “woman’s language” (to reiterate my theme) in getting the job done with less check writing, postage stamps and wrapping materials.  Recycling bins everywhere thank them.

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.

1) Tradition is a hard nut to crack.  Let’s face it. The minds and eyes of those – male or female – who organize, plan and program conferences are so used to seeing “male” they don’t even realize it.  To be clear: an even 50/50 gender balance, just for quota’s sake, is not REALLY what anyone wants.

2) The digital realm basically came out of the technology industry, which our society still may jokingly/wrongly perceive as “just a bunch of white, pasty guys in their basements” (whether true or not).  That industry just has a male essence, and likely always will.  Interestingly, social media, though it is within this masculinized digital/tech framework, is shaping up to be quite the place for excellence in previously considered “feminine” traits – like… being social.  Finding a few incredible women to round out the top ten list in question should not have been hard.

3) Isn’t it really about delivering a much broader variety in speaker style? Gender is, indeed, one quick way to start to sort that out – even if there is more to it than that.  If we are honest, we’d all admit that conferences can be really boring.  That’s why speaker diversity – in topics, methods, skin color, life experience, presentation style and so on – is KEY!  If it were possible to do a gender-blind review of speaking styles (but, too bad: voices and bodies would give it away) – I bet we’d see a more organic gender variety in speakers.

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As with much in business/marketing, gender can be an underlying “agent” for missed opportunity or subtle miscues.  It remains a very misunderstood and non-discussed influence due to much grander reasons (psychology, human behavior, sociology) than what business need necessarily accept responsibility for.  (And, that’s what I study – so I’ll keep you posted.)  However, that is not to say we need to go to the extremes of enforcing some sort of gender equality for no reason other than to say we did.  Rather – consider the feminine traits/characteristics of your choices/or consumers’ purchase influencers.

That said: In terms of a speaker – do you need “women” vs “men” or a bit more emotion/storytelling/aesthetics vs graphs/charts/facts to balance out your roster?  You may well find those two style options along gender lines, but – especially with conference attendee numbers going down so significantly – assumptions are your enemies.

Characteristic-based segmentation, not simply gender segmentation, will deliver the diversity and engagement your audiences/participants seek.  Mark my words.

This “follower split” suggests that women are driven less by followers than men, or have more stringent thresholds for reciprocating relationships. This is intriguing, especially given that females hold a slight majority on Twitter: we found that men comprise 45% of Twitter users, while women represent 55%.

Men are more likely to enter into a communication via status/positioning, according to Tannen’s research (so this is not a judgment, guys).  In the case of Twitter, that would mean that men tend to be interested in “the numbers,” and the higher the better. Whether or not any of the people they are following, or who follow them, are people they might like to get to know better is not the point.  Having an astounding “followers” count is.

Women, on the other hand, are perhaps more likely to be looking for connection based on common ground (as per Tannen, again).  For women on Twitter, that may mean actually taking the time to look at the profiles of each person who is newly following them to see if there’s enough reason to follow said person back.  Women have ways of connecting lots of information into one cohesive “it all matters” picture, and so more readily give themselves a reality check of how much time they might have for Twitter and how they’d best use it for their own purposes (and no one else’s).  It’s not the numbers, it’s the relationships that may potentially result for them.

Now, I’m not saying that this holds true for everyone, but Tannen is pretty smart and her insight gives us, as Twitter users (I’m @AndreaLearned) and marketers a lot to think about.  If we admit it, the Twitter phenomenon pointed out by these HBR folks does demonstrate an intriguing gender difference in human behavior, and in the whys and wherefores of interpersonal communication.

The insights therein may help you or your brand decide: 1)if a woman or man should do the Tweeting, 2) what to include in your account profile to inspire more people to want to connect with you, and 3) what sorts of things you should be pollng your followers about in order to do a better job connecting with everyone!

If there is a gendered pattern to human behavior in social media, don’t fight it and don’t judge it.  Men like to follow and be followed, and women need more than that to establish a real relationship.   Twitter is just a microcosm of humanity, after all.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it:

1) Please read this book.

There will be more from me, once I’ve had the chance to read it myself, but in the meantime (and if you are game), I strongly suggest you take a look at the excerpted first chapter of Leadership and the Sexes by Michael Gurian and Barbara Annis now posted on 800CEORead.

2) Let me know via email if you are taking me up on this assignment.

3) I’ll keep track of the group (possibly via a Facebook or LinkedIn).

4) I’d love to start a discussion in early October and possibly interview a few of you for some research I am doing.

Here’s a paragraph from the excerpt that struck me (“bridge brain” in this book refers to the brains that seem to be not all female or not all male, such as: people whose brains share a number of characteristics of the other gender’s brain, transgendered individuals, and people who just sense their brains may be toward the middle of the gender/brain spectrum.)

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What research into bridge brains is showing us scientifically is this: (1) every one of us has both our own gender’s and the other gender’s hormones and brain characteristics (hormones and the brain are “human,” and we all share them); (2) yet if we are biologically male, we will tend toward being more male on the brain/chemistry spectrum, and if female, we’ll tend toward female; and (3) some of us are closer to the other gender on the spectrum than others are. Some of us, in other words, are neurological “bridges” between genders.

You yourself might often see bridge brain women in the technology sector, just as you might see bridge brain men in the social services sector. The bridge brain women might be a lot like the woman who spoke to Michael, and the bridge brain men more likely than other men to multitask, care a lot about verbal and emotional material, and not be as competitive as other men or women around them.

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Fascinating – think about how bridge brains come into play in the parenting/career balance, or how a male or female marketer with a bridge brain might be well suited to projects focusing on the opposite gender. Bridge the thinking and have more holistic understanding of how/why humans consume.

I’m psyched to read this book and hope some of you will join me.