Linda McGregor is the Principal of All About Eve, a strategic marketing consultancy that specialises in communicating more effectively to females. The remainder of this popular series will be released on the All About Eve website, please click here to be updated of their release.

All About Eve’s Linda McGregor is back this issue with another insightful contribution on successful marketing to females. This month, Linda looks at why women always want more than you think, will scrutinise what’s on offer and provide tips on how your brand can satisfy this female characteristic.

Women wrote the book on wanting it all, often declaring to want everything men want, and then some. But it’s not surprising when you consider how a woman’s brain works – as a super-computer with more interconnectivity and storage capacity than the male brain by far.

Linda McGregor,
Principal,
All About Eve

The female is all about attention to detail and depth, so she:
• looks at more options
• is less content with decisions that are a compromise
• is far more likely to pick up inconsistencies in her cross-referencing

Some major brands have been caught out by inconsistencies between various aspects of the
marketing program:

UK chocolate brand for men, Yorkie

Since 1976, Yorkie had unashamedly marketed itself as the chocolate bar for men, with the famous ‘Trucker’ ads. In 2002 even more macho positioning saw an ad campaign with slogans such as ‘Don’t feed the birds’, ‘Not available in pink’ and ‘Save your money for driving lessons’ and featuring the ‘Not for girls’ tagline.

Fast forward to 2006, the brand was experiencing declining sales in a female dominated category. So a new strategy was to target women with a pink version of the Yorkie. Saying ‘VERY LIMITED EDITION’, the chocolate bar was the same, but with pink packaging and ‘Female language’ such as ‘GET YOUR LIPS AROUND THIS’! Do I even need to talk about the brand offer inconsistency?

Walking the talk
So you need consistency of message, the offer, the communication and the action. Women more than men are looking for consistency between words in an advertising campaign, its claims and then the actual delivery of the product or service.

Here are two examples of brands walking the talk:

Below is a more recent example that further demonstrates the brand’s consistency of message in communications.

Jodie McGregor Flowers
Sydney florist, Jodie McGregor, with tagline ‘Fabulous flowers for fabulous people’ has won awards year after year. Why? Because the brand lives up to its tagline. Apart from the flowers themselves being of a superior quality, the service is exceptional, delivering flowers with cards explaining what’s in the bouquet (offering husbands a hint for the future!) delighting regular customers with gifts on their birthdays, a flower addicts club and much more. With an informative, easily scannable website, the company is ultimately making the customer feel valuable.

Both these brands are putting words into action and explains why brands such as these gain loyalty with women in particular. It also offers an insight into why specialty stores, with their attention to detail, rate consistently higher on positive emotional drivers than supermarkets. And are consistently able to charge premium prices.

When wanting more isn’t always good – how your brand can help
Often women dislike their inbuilt need to review every option. Newsflash: she often just wants to make a quick decision! So be the good guy, the brand that makes it possible for her to do this and yet still feel she’s made the right decision. Add value with your solutions to her problems and you’ll be a hero.

Cancer Council girls’ night in
The Cancer Council gets it right, helping women to stop thinking and start doing, by providing them with the tools to get started with a ‘Girls Night In’ campaign for the charity. It advertises the idea online and in print, then makes it as easy as 1,2 3 to do.

Here are some broad principles to avoid, which will ultimately prevent her from making better, faster decisions:

• anything that aims to sell, rather than helps and informs. At best you’ll just confuse the process. At worst you’ll annoy her and she’ll ignore your brand.
• anything that tells her there’s only one right answer. This might seem helpful as one answer is simpler but it is likely to be rejected as, unless you have that relationship with her, it again comes across as just a sell. You’ve taken no account of her personal needs.

In a nutshell, she’ll always want more, do more and have more, and that, handled correctly and consistently, is your cue to sell more!

Linda

P.S. Don’t forget the remainder of this popular series will be released on the All About Eve website, please click here to be updated of their release.

Thanks to: Linda McGregor, All About Eve, Yorkie, Dove, Jodie McGregor Florist, Cancer Council.
Posted by: Carmen Campbell

We could, and do, have endless conversations on the differences between men and women and the implications this has in the communications industry.

So we invited female marketing consultancy, All About Eve, to share its wisdom into the female mind.

Over the course of 2010 we’ll be featuring regular posts from Eve’s Principal, Linda McGregor. Linda has joined us in the past to talk about The Fundamental Four when communicating to females – you can watch her video interviews here.

Q. You’ve named this series Don’t think pink, what are you referring to?

A. Basically, Don’t think pink refers to getting it wrong when trying to tailor marketing to female audiences. A lot of the problems we see come from outdated thinking - use of established stereotypes, outdated assumptions and information. All good intentions - but insufficient thinking or expertise into the female mind.

Linda McGregor,
Principal,
All About Eve

The combination of all these things tends to result in clumsy or over obvious campaigns that come across as a patronising pat on the head for many women.

Here are a couple of examples to demonstrate both ends of the scale.

Pink Cabs
Many women feel less than safe getting into taxis alone late at night, especially with male drivers.

Pink Cabs addressed the issue simply and obviously with female only taxi drivers and with the cabs being easy to spot by being bright pink! Great understanding of a need and even greater positive use of a stereotype female colour.

Dodge La Femme
In the 50s, automotive manufacturers identified women as a new target market and wanted a car to meet their needs.

Even when we account for its age, the Dodge La Femme campaign demonstrated a lack of real knowledge about what women wanted from a car - other than the assumption that it would be about looks - flower patterns and pink. Its withdrawal from the market due to low sales only a few years later says everything about its failure to appeal.

Q. So what’s the answer?

A. We like to say think link, not pink! By that we mean think, first of how to connect (link) with her as a purchaser of your brand when constructing the offer and message. Then, and only then, address the fact that she’s female, by ensuring you use a form of communication that talks to her in and on her terms.

Three pointers:

1. Demonstrate genuine and real understanding of her world, through empathy and ideas
   Women spend their lives outwardly focused on how they interact with others. They expect a brand to behave the same way when it communicates – focus on her, then on itself. The other way around is selling AT her, instead of first bonding by proving it really gets her wants and needs.

   Dove’s Real Beauty campaign is a classic example, it tapped into females need for recognition that women come in all shapes, sizes and looks and are not all supermodels.

2. Perform to her needs and wants
   Remember that needs are rooted in reality thus easier for her to put a value against. Wants however, are all about dreams and often highly emotional, resulting in a different decision making process. One comparison would be the purchase of most grocery products versus the purchase of a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes.
3. It’s not just the brand offer, but also how it’s said, when and where
   We often see good messages let down by poor execution. Sensitivity to context is as natural to women as breathing, so they unwittingly demand the same when you’re marketing to them. Due to her brain construct, she joins the brand dots across message, consistency of talk and action, time, mood and words.

Q. So where to from here?

A. I’ll leave you with one thought to get your mind ready for the coming months. Think about marketing to women as a real relationship. It will help you better assess the reality of your campaign and its likely success.

In some of the topics coming up: women and sex; women and humour; why she’ll always want more; relationships vs. transactions; differences between the sister generations and more. Any other burning topics you’d like covered? Just hit the comment button below and let us know.

Until next time!

Thanks to: Linda McGregor, All About Eve
Posted by: Carmen Campbell

2009 saw an evolution in media and marketing communications. This has created many challenges and opportunities. Here’s what it meant to our people…

Download PDF

Posted by: Carmen Campbell
Thanks to: Mitchell Communication Group contributors

In this interview we catch up with Kelly Drew, General Manager of Haystac, to talk PR and social media.

Kelly shares five tips for managing PR crises now that social media is such a core component of our lives.

For more information contact: k.drew@haystac.com.au

Thanks to: Kelly Drew, Haystac

In last month’s issue Angus looked at the importance of a brand sticking to its strategic principles, despite the mouth-watering savings on offer. But in the current softer media market, it’s likely you’ll be making savings on your media plans and if you are, what are you doing with the savings?

Do you write them straight to your bottom line? Do you buy heavier weights without increasing spend? Or do you use the savings to try something a little different?

The media continues to evolve, resulting in some great new innovations coming to market. And right now there are some interesting properties that will change the way we plan and buy media in the future.

So if you do find that you have freed up some media dollars, why not consider the below and take advantage of the low cost to entry of what will undoubtedly soon become an integral part of your channel plan:

Neil Burton, Strategist

Digital television

We’ve already seen the launch of Ten’s One HD (24/7 sports) and more recently Nine’s GO! (female orientated entertainment & lifestyle) to positive audience viewing figures.

The Free to Air (FTA) networks know they can’t just repeat the same content they run on their standard channel. What this means to advertisers on FTA is that they can now extend and expand their audience with the one station, while continuing to leverage the benefits associated with solus network buys.

Digital radio

The advent of digital radio provides a new outlet for brands and consumers to engage through a common passion, music.

Forget the technology (up to the second track listings, improved sound quality and the ability to pause and rewind), what makes digital radio so exciting is the choice and diversity of music that will be available. Yes, in terms of reach the numbers aren’t there yet, but brands can now target an audience through their love of a music genre.

This is something Smirnoff is doing a great job of with its weekly show on novanation.com.au

You can also associate your brand to a particular artist as Optus did here with its Optus’ Pink radio, which played nothing but Pink songs and interviews for the duration of her time in Australia.

Online video

It is what it says, it’s video content online. Breaking it down even further, it’s simply watching your favourite content on the box in front of you. Sound familiar?

What makes this innovation so interesting is that it’s now being used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your TV buy (being thought of as an additional TV network), not as just a nice-to-have addition to your online activity.

Online video delivers incremental reach by serving a TVC (or bespoke content) to a light TV viewing audience and its interactivity enables an advertiser to immediately capture and drive interest to a destination on the web for action or more information.

With the convergence of TV and digital, Mitchells has recently appointed a specialist TV planner and buyer to consult on all online and digital video activity.

These innovations are here to stay and they’re going to play an increasingly important part in the channel plan. By investing a small percentage of a brand’s overall media spend to new innovations, marketers will gain learnings and experience that their competitors may not have, enabling them to better adapt to the changing media landscape.

Especially if you can do it by offsetting the costs with some of those savings you’ve been making in the softer media market.

If you would like to talk about these innovations in more detail email me at nburton@mitchells.com.au

Posted by: Neil Burton

There are very few people who are known by their first name only. Harold, a very well-known name in our industry, is one such person.

Now you can gain insight into this enigmatic and charismatic man as his autobiography has just hit the book shelves.

Part autobiography, part guidebook, Living Large explores Harold’s personal journey from son of a sawmiller to owner of a $100 million business. It provides tales many of us in the office have had the pleasure of hearing first hand and is an inspiration for those trying to make it in the corporate jungle.

Living Large is available now at all good bookshops or online at mup.com.au.

Enjoy!

Thanks to: Harold Mitchell, Melbourne University Publishing