I’m pretty sure Johnson & Johnson did not intend for their ad campaign to explain why people start to engage with sustainability, but I’m certainly using their tagline that way. “Having a Baby Changes Everything,” was by no means first coined by J&J’s ad team, but their great black and white television spots (remember the cute baby being washed in the sink?) made just about everyone stop and watch (parent or no, I suspect).  And, that tag phrase well represents the distinct line in the sand of life, where you think one way pre-first baby and about 180 degrees differently as soon as baby #1 arrives.  That’s why this particular life transition can be so crucial for sustainability engagement and behavior change in humans.

And, that’s why new research from EcoFocus Worldwide about EcoAware Dads is helpful.  Their recent study found:

Already, more than 1 in 2 Dads always or usually factor environmental considerations into their purchase decisions, and another 32% sometimes do so.  Almost 9 in 10 say it is important enough to change brands to make a more eco-friendly choice and more than 4 in 10 are prepared to pay more for environmentally friendly products that get it right.

But wait, there’s more.  3 out of 4 of the dads studied also agreed that : “with each step I take to make my home or lifestyle more eco-friendly, it gets easier to take the next step.”

What this all says to me, is that:

- What we see in moms with regard to their growing “green behavior” may be more a matter of parenthood than gender. So, when you see “green mom” research, replace “green parent” for “mom” in all that you read, and you may gain insight into a broader segment of your customer base.

- “Having a baby” is only the start of changing everything, but it can be a powerful launching off point. The opportunities for sustainable brands is to be there, just at that life transition point, to help newly super-environmentally conscious parents maintain their “green” living momentum and continue to take such responsible steps in child rearing and household management (and beyond!).

- Finally, segmenting market research into studies of moms, dads, aunts, chess players, bike riders, and so on, makes for much more sexy and exciting business news soundbytes.  However, as a seasoned and discerning marketing brain, your job is to think about how some findings may be very true across market segments – and then dig and combine to develop your own insights from there.

We can learn about sustainable consumer/citizen behavior by identifying and examining the same life stages, roles and influencers we’ve long known to affect buying decisions in general.  The subtleties and hidden gems of understanding come from taking into account what may be making consumers even casually consider “greening up” in the first place – and then serving that at its root.

Given that, “having a baby changes everything” may be a good phrase to just pin up on your bulletin board, right in front of your nose.

Photo credit: Paul

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Americans, with help from “the media,” tend to exaggerate problems due to a) tradition – such thinking is embedded in our DNA,  and/or; b) sexy “sound byte-itis” – such thinking makes for more exciting cable news watching.  Gender continues to be one of those hot topics, with women’s leadership strengths currently appearing front and center.  That’s why I so appreciated Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times op-ed, “Don’t Write Off Men Just Yet.” He’s read and respected by many, and he tells it like it is.  It’s almost as if each of his columns could start with: “Now, let’s step back a minute…”  A man after my own heart.

In this piece, he seems to be saying that while there are differences between the sexes in who pursues higher education, who does better in math versus writing, and how each sex tends to learn, the differences are not as great as they are made out to be. And, the point really is how it all balances out (a macro view vs. micro view).  It’s like the gender pendulum I’ve written about lately.  We may actually be heading toward the sweet spot in how various gender and individual strengths are sorting out and combining for more powerful and lasting positive outcomes all around.  As Kristof puts it:

My hunch is that we’re moving into greater gender balance, not a fundamentally new imbalance in the other direction. Don’t hold your breath for “the end of men.”

There is  great wisdom for businesses and organizational change therein.  The key lies in celebrating the fact that women are catching up, but not pushing to “surge ahead” of men and toward imbalance in the other direction.  We already know that a world where one gender is way ahead of the other in terms of education, leadership strengths or “power,” for example, doesn’t work.  It is neither productive nor sustainable.

To build an economy of thriving and interconnecting systems of people, planet and profit, we’ve got to allow for and nurture an organic organizational gender balance.  There is no one rule, number or linear path for how this “should” look in every case. That already shows that “women’s ways” of thinking are catching up with, and balancing out, traditional thinking.  Together, we are improving collective business wisdom every single day.

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.

Kimpton offers specially prepared dinners for its most frequent guests, including one recently in Manhattan for top-tier female travelers. The chain has also introduced weekend trips like the one in October for its most frequent travelers and their spouses, in Oregon’s wine country. The wine-tasting getaway came with meals made by Kimpton chefs, and a balloon ride over the vineyards.

Paul Seus, a management consultant from Chicago who attended the Oregon weekend with his wife, Amy, said Kimpton’s special treatment cemented his loyalty.

“Kimpton called me and asked me if I would like to do something special,” Mr. Seus said.
“I’ve traveled my whole career, and I used to stay, well, wherever,” he said. “Now I’ll only stay somewhere else if I can’t find one of their hotels.”

As Olson’s piece shows, a lot of other hotel chains are now serving the higher standards they learned about by doing female consumer research.  Two things worth noting:

1) Being guided and inspired by women does NOT have to mean the result is pink, girly and alienating (if not horrifying) for men.

2) Today’s men are starting to “get it,” in that they are more aware that women’s higher standards raise the bar for the service they (men) receive as well.  So, of course, men are noticing and learning to expect such treatment too.

What does this mean for your industry?

Look out “marketing to women” laggards, now you risk losing the guys too.

So… why has the pistachio industry used those situations or “celebrities” for a new advertising campaign?  Apparently in hopes of overcoming the bad pistachio blood from a salmonella scare, Bruce Horovitz writes in USA Today about how the industry’s marketers think this approach is a sure bet.

While I know a fair number of men likely eat pistachios by the handfuls (if my dad and brother are any indication), I’m less sure men are the core grocery store decision-maker on that purchase..  That’s what makes it all the more odd that the “sexy” campaign is so obviously more geared toward men than women.  What would the industry do if this effort ends up being, in fact, so very lame that women who’d otherwise choose pistachios might head to good old peanuts from now on?

I have blogged about this over the years.  The way traditional industries get this marketing to women thing wrong seems to be a fairly common occurrence, especially with their first attempts at really focusing in on that demographic.  Going the sexy route, often adds a whole other dimension of stupidity.  The marketing for the  wine brand, “Seduction” (in 2005) – which emphasized the “O” in their vineyard name, for one (go ahead, undress the bottle!) – would make for a great Sarah Haskins satire today!

Were there women involved in the pistachio industry’s development process who cleared the approach?  With transparent marketing, instead, the idea would have been to be guided and inspired by women – who,  I suspect, are the biggest pistachio buyers.  But, even if that sort of consumer interaction wasn’t a possibility (or within budget), I’d think that any of the women on the pistachio marketing team might have voiced a bit of concern (as in: “now, wait a minute…”).  Involving a few more women in this overall effort would likely have helped the team find a “sexy” way to sell pistachios that actually spoke to women.

So, I’m not saying that sex is always the wrong approach -but that, with women, there will have to be a lot more subtlety.  A dominatrix, Levi Johnston and “Greg Brady’s” adventures are just not in that category.

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.

From what I’ve observed, women seem to be the ones who strongly advocate for it with male bosses, and tend to feel up against a brick wall until some random point is finally heard.  Even with plenty of brilliant female marketers making the case, those male bosses may continue to call M2W a “women’s thing” (so they stay out of it, and perhaps approve a few budgets for “initiatives”).  Thus, I’ve been exploring what makes men actually absorb and become engaged by the M2W opportunity (and, as so many of you well know, it is a BIG one).  Must the case be delivered by men?

An email conversation with a male friend and marketer got me thinking again.  There are now a great selection of M2W books written by a woman or two (the one I co-authored, Don’t Think Pink, is included, I hope) and those authors and many other experts who have yet to add their books (I hear rumblings of many to come) are extremely knowledgeable and credible.  And yet, if you go back and read Tom Peters small booklet on this topic (copyright 2001), Women Roar, he tells a story that could easily be the case today. To quote Peters (keeping his emphasis and the now beyond-dated references):

“It’s early 1997.  I am keynoting that First Annual MacDonald Communications Marketing to Women seminar, in Manhattan.  I finish my talk, head down the aisle and off to my next gig.  Someone accosts me.  She is one of the top half dozen executives at BankAmerica.  I know her.  She’s Kathleen Brown.  Former elected treasurer of the State of California. (By some measures, earth’s sixth largest economy.) Former gubernatorial candidate, who ran a close election in an impossible situation against a popular incumbent.  (I knew her from that campaign.) “Tom,” she says, pulling me aside, “would you do me a favor next time you’re in the Bay Area?” “If I can, of course,” I say.  KB: “I’d like you to have dinner with me and David Coulter [CEO of BankAmerica, prior to NationsBank merger].” “Sure, but why?” I say.  “I’d like you to tell him what you just told this group,” she says. Me: “Me?  Why me? You were the treasurer of the earth’s sixth largest economy.  You’re one of the most powerful women in one of the most powerful single ‘nations’ on earth.  I’m just a consultant. Why me?”  I repeat.  The reply (of course): “He’ll listen to you.”

It is now 12 years later, and I’m guessing Peters still has examples he could share of otherwise very successful and smart businessmen who gloss over M2W until they hear it from him.  Now, a new book by Michael Silverstein (with two co-authors) has just been published and another is on its way from Paco Underhill.  Do/will those books really introduce new insights/knowledge, or is it that the packaging might be more to a man’s liking?  Will pulling in Silverstein or Underhill to speak at a corporate event hold more weight than a woman – Marti Barletta, for example?  Will their books somehow get more play in the business press?

Generational differences are the one thing I see that may bring about a big shift on this front.  I am watching closely and studying up. But, already my conversations with Gen Y men have been enlightening.  Their backgrounds have been less artificially or environmentally “gendered.” They don’t recognize a lot of what has been so frustrating for those of us who are, say, 40+.

Here’s the truth: marketing to women expertise in all forms, shapes, ages, colors and sizes should be sought and leveraged by every single wise marketer out there – male or female.  Whomever advocates for pursuing the women’s market opportunity should be heard, applauded and rewarded. Don’t wait for Tom Peters to tell you like it is.

Marketing to women is quite simply gender neutral good business.

The answer: it’s not an either/or question.  Rather, think of the interests/influences on today’s soup buyer and soup eater (who may, of course, even be the same person in this heavily unmarried world).  No matter who is in the buyer/eater role, soup consumers are all still looking for healthy and convenient nutrition, and possibly also looking for a bit more big picture corporate social responsibility.  Those things aren’t “genderfied,” are they?

Rather – as the Brandweek author (who is unattributed) writes:

In addition to reaching out to its core male consumer, Campbell is running Chunky soup print advertising for the first time in women’s magazines, such as Cosmopolitan and Woman’s Day, and featuring the product in ads that will air as part of female-oriented television and radio programming.

“Women not only make the majority of purchase and meal decisions for the household, but they actually consume about half of the Chunky soup that is brought into the home,” said senior brand manager Douglas Brand. “We took a fresh new approach with our media plan to speak to both men and women. People can expect to see Chunky ads during NFL games and in many other surprising places.”

Yes. It’s a whole new world, especially for a lot of traditionally male-oriented brands. But, the answer is not to start from scratch, or to look for the black and white solution.  Instead, get comfortable with the gray areas.  Try mapping out your unique layers of buyers and consumers to develop a hybrid of good, old-fashioned (relevant) marketing strategy.  The key to marketing to women – being guided and inspired by the customers you seek – should always be your bottom line, no gender about it.

As Geoffrey A. Fowler wrote in the Wall Street Journal of their effort, rather than go with a design firm’s idea to use a “pinkified” [note: my word, not Fowler's] palette, the Blue Nile team…

“…decided to emphasize an upscale, rather than effeminate, look. It removed a left-hand navigation bar (still standard on many e-commerce sites), leaving space on the screen for much larger — and more artistically cropped — photos of products. The changes are intended to make the experience more akin to window shopping.”

The specifics include an easier way to customize ring designs and the fact that much of the shopping can be contained on a single page, without a lot of clicking back and forth.  Blue Nile, like so many other jewelery retailers, knows that its core customer is men buying engagement rings, but what they also know is that women are still tremendously influential in where/how their rings are purchased/selected (they are a “shadow consumer” as it were).

Will Blue Nile’s choice to revise their site in these ways alienate men? It shouldn’t.  Their approach was smart – in identifying and serving the qualities and functionality that women tend to expect from high-end fashion or retail sites.  What they’ve done is go much further than a patronizing palette switch.  Their re-design seems to have been guided and inspired by the women who are the end-wearer of the ring, but in a way that also serves the typical buyer very well – and usually better.

Engagement rings are an interesting product because they are very uniquely and visibly purchased by a male (for the most part) under MUCH influence by – and to the delight of – a female.  That makes this an extreme case from which other traditional brands in traditional industries can learn.  Your products may long have been perceived as for men alone, but these days you must acknowledge that women are in that picture too – either as direct consumers or as heavy influencers of the purchase.

Your response to the challenge could be one of two:  1) to tackle the problem superficially, with the wave of a pink wand, OR, 2) to dig deep below that surface and identify/leverage the characteristics of the most demanding customer (who is often a woman).  For her, as well as your long-established male market, a waving wand will have no power.

Most brands today are marketing to both men and women simultaneously, but to varying degrees.  Even for the more traditional categories, like engagement rings (or cars, or tools or finances) – the goal should be to serve the high expectations of your female customers transparently.  Your core male customer, who has been there forever and is your biggest fan, will also notice and positively respond to those changes – as long as they don’t have a lingering “marketing to women” essence.

Marketing to women is not a gender exclusive pursuit.  Rather, it guides even the most traditional industries, to serve the highest customer standard – and that should include and heighten the experience for men.

Here’s hoping.  And, to wit, in his interview with Hillary Clinton within this most recent issue of the NYT Magazine, Mark Landler posed a telling question that I believe has broad implications:

Lander’s Question for Clinton: “I’ve been at more than a few women’s events with you overseas where the men in the audience drift off to their Blackberrys or into a snooze after a few minutes.  How do you change the mind-set, not just overseas but at home and in this building [The White House], that tends to view women’s issues as a pink ghetto?”

Clinton: “By making the arguments that I am making here – that so-called women’s issues are stability issues, security issues, equity issues.”

Clinton goes on to cite World Bank and related research that has found, time and again, that where women are mistreated/denied equal rights, there is instability that serves as “an incubator of extremism.”

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In other words, Clinton seems to be saying that – in order to keep women’s causes from sinking into that pink ghetto – she has to make it less about gender and more about the human interest angle that is best (which seems to be represented by women fairly often).  Gender is indeed a helpful shorthand, and a good way to quickly express/categorize the human values surrounding stability, security and equity.  But, the broader population – for whom these issues are AS important – will more likely pay attention when they are framed differently, and in ways that are more accessible to the Blackberry wielding, snoozing men in the room.

I have my own favorite lens on women’s global causes in World Pulse Media – a media organization I advised early on in its formation, and that has taken real steps to make their work not just about women/for women, but for all people – right from the start.  The World Pulse tone and approach has attracted a solid gender mix of astounding people who both participate in and advise the organization.  (Kudos, my friends!)

Anyway – this much larger women’s cause and women’s economy issue deserves this growing attention, but the underlying question remains: how to get men more engaged/participatory?  And, that question can apply just as much to the obviously less culturally significant marketing realm too.

I’ve written about this a bit here and on HuffingtonPost, and have been talking with a lot of men these past couple of years about how they’d become more willing to “take on” the idea of marketing to women.  They’ve mainly responded just as Clinton suggested – that the idea is to talk about this sector in terms of “emerging powerful market” and go over the stats/numbers initially.  Once you’ve gotten men in the room in that way, Blackberrys will be turned off, and eyes will remain wide open.   Even given that the women’s market is by no means still an “emerging” one, it’s the psychology of making this stuff matter to people that needs some attention.  When all is said and done, the idea is to convince an entire audience to better serve ways of buying that just happen to be well-represented by female consumers.

But back to Clinton’s point and something a tad more important than buying and selling goods or services: the idea is to convince an entire audience to participate in the global improvement of things like stability, security and equity – all of which just happen to represent things that are extra important to women.