Why She Buys (11 page)

Women avoid conflict situations. Men avoid emotional scenes
.

Why is it that my husband still fast-forwards through the romantic scenes in movies (“Boring,” he’ll say), while I fast-forward through the blood-and-guts scenes in action films? Scientists contend that women’s aversion to conflict has roots in stone-age brain circuitry. In our iPod-wielding, music-downloading, Google-icious world, it’s hard to remember that our bodies are still the ancient machines they were back when we lived in caves. The human body and brain are designed for survival of the species, plain and simple.

Brain researcher Louann Brizendine, M.D., argues that women’s brains are programmed for social harmony because the survival of the species once depended on it.
²³
Back in the wild, if a woman lost her male protector/provider, she and her children would be vulnerable to predators and starvation. It wasn’t easy for women to survive on their own and run out of harm’s way while toting a gaggle of kids. Consequently, the cavewoman’s goal was to keep peace and harmony with other members of the clan to ensure her protection, and to see that her kids made it to adulthood, to continue the circle of life.

Conflict, the theory goes, is thus a traumatic event for women, because on a deep level it may feel like a life-or-death issue. These feelings of aversion are brought on by changes in brain neurochemicals that can be triggered by conflict. The changes are described as an “unbearable” activation of the brain by serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine.
²⁴
Tears, nausea, and the feeling of a pit in the stomach are frequent outcomes.

The stone-age survival theory goes hand in hand with anthropologists’ ideas about why female friendships are important to women. Women turn to their girlfriends in times of conflict and trouble. If our stone-age gal lost her man during a hunt, she would depend on her girlfriends to help take care of herself and her children, and to ask their male partners to share their food. For women, preserving relationships was long a matter of life and death, and that’s why sustaining these friendships is still one of women’s greatest needs.

Which means that ads and sales training seminars that use “andro-verbs” such as
annihilate
,
destroy
,
crush
,
nuke
, and
exterminate
simply turn off most women, who are programmed to keep things harmonious and peaceful with the people around them. What’s just as bad as violent copy is the increasing use of violent images of women in fashion and liquor advertising, as in the infamous Dolce & Gabbana (D&G) magazine ad that featured a woman who looked like she was about to be raped by a bunch of fabulous-looking but threatening men. When the ad first appeared in late February 2007, the Spanish government was the first to demand its removal. By early March, thirteen Italian senators, both women and men, had joined in protest.
²⁵
D&G complied by withdrawing the ad from circulation in both countries. Morality issues aside, a violent image is just not the kind of motivation that makes a girl want to run out and buy a new blouse.

This gender difference has business implications for marketing in particular. In-your-face campaigns, slogans, and images that glamorize violence, one-upmanship, battles,
death, and superiority over lesser mortals are turn-offs to most women.

•
Avoid violent images and language when selling to women
.

Marketing
Terminator-
style will turn off far more women than it attracts. As the keepers of social harmony, women don’t view the world as a place full of potential enemies, mutants, and evil combatants. According to Daniel Amen, M.D., the clinical neuroscientist and brain-imaging expert, men have lower activity in the front part of their brains, and need excitement and stimulation if they are to pay attention to something like a marketing message. Which means that violent techniques probably work fairly well with a male audience. Women, on the other hand, have better attention spans but need to have their
emotional
brain stimulated if they are to pay maximum attention. In a Marketing to Moms Coalition study of the best way to relate to mothers in advertising, for example, respondents ranked the following as the best techniques:

1
. Depict a woman having fun with her kids.

2
. Show her multitasking.

3
. Make her laugh.
²⁶

•
Emphasize positive qualities without being overly negative about your competitors
.

In business, women are turned off by displays of ego and superiority. Try to take the high road whenever you’re positioning your business against someone else’s. The campaign from Apple, which juxtaposes a laid-back, artsy Mac dude versus a PC geek in a suit, is a gentle example
of going head-to-head with a big competitor in a way that’s not vicious—although one could argue that it’s been viciously effective.

Conversely, as this book is being written, the soup brands Campbell’s and Progresso are locked in a heated, nasty battle that the media have dubbed the “Soup Wars” and that seems thousands of miles away from the warm and fuzzy image soup is supposed to engender. Each brand is hurling “bad ingredient” accusations at the other to such a degree that they’re being lampooned on shows like
The Colbert Report
. The ads are so similar in looks, tone, and language that it’s hard to tell which ones are for Campbell’s and which ones are for Progresso. I predict the soup slinging is going to leave a sour taste in the mouths of millions of consumers for both brands, since it has been executed without humor, in a style that feels very tit-for-tat—so much so that one can imagine the executives lying awake at night thinking of new insults to hurl at the other in the next ad. Somehow the fight seems personal, and not about all those people buying the soup.

The Argument for Focusing on the Female Consumer

C
LEARLY
,
gender differences play an important role in how one interprets the world. Recognizing how these differences impact purchasing decisions is a significant first step toward getting in tune with your customers’ “female frequency.” Here is a summary sheet to help guide you along the way.

How Men and Women View the World Differently

WOMEN Desire to be indispensable.

MEN Desire to be independent.
WOMEN Desire to be connected.

MEN Desire to be respected.
WOMEN Wish to minimize status differences.

MEN Awareness of rank in the pack.
WOMEN Disclose feelings and vulnerabilities.

MEN Hide vulnerabilities. Do not discuss feelings.
WOMEN Connect with other people by talking.

MEN Connect with other people through activities or by talking about business, politics, or sports.
WOMEN Feel powerful when they can help others.

MEN Feel powerful when they’re in charge of others.
WOMEN Details about people are the best part of any conversation. There can never be enough detail.

MEN Yawn. Details about people are boring. Technical and sports-related details—now
those
are what’s interesting.
WOMEN Conflict can be stressful.

MEN Conflict is great; it gets the blood going.
WOMEN Collaboration is more fun.

MEN Collaboration is exciting only if there’s a goal to win and someone to beat.
WOMEN Self-esteem is derived from the quality of relationships in their lives. Achievement is based on internal goals.

MEN Self-esteem is derived from achieving things independently, without help or handouts from others.
WOMEN What a product does for me is what’s most interesting.

MEN How a product works is most interesting.

3

THE FIVE GLOBAL

TRENDS DRIVING

FEMALE CONSUMERS

L
ike a lot of people in business, I learn about new trends all the time. Since I subscribe to trend-spotting services and newsletters, I’d estimate that I’m exposed to between 10 and 20 new trends each month, which adds up to about 120 to 240 new trends a year. These numbers don’t even count all the trends I read about routinely in newspapers and trade magazines. When those are added in, the number probably gets closer to 300 new trends a year—more than one for every workday on the calendar. As much as I enjoy feeling like my fingers are on the pulse, sometimes it feels like sheer trend overload.

I’m not the only one. Many of my colleagues and clients also suffer from trend fatigue. Clearly, no one can or should develop strategies around all the trends we’re exposed to
on a daily basis. Yet it’s easy to see why there’s such a big appetite for them—trend data give us what we hope is a useful glimpse into the future, and trends spark our imaginations with their clever names (
greenwashing
, anyone?). But the sheer number of trends being reported on a continuing basis means that there is no possible way to follow all of them. How do we know which ones are meaningful and which aren’t? There’s the rub.

When it comes to women, it can be more effective to look at the biggest picture of all—the broad demographic changes reflecting the way they are living and working in our specific moment in history. In the case of women, there are five important global demographic changes—five “high hard ones,” in corporate-speak—that impact the way women now make purchasing decisions. They are:

1. The presence of more women in the workforce changes everything
.

Women’s share of the labor force has increased in almost all regions of the world.
¹
You already know there are millions of women earning an income. What’s less known is how the simple fact of taking a job changes every aspect of a woman’s reality—especially how she spends her time and money.

2. Delayed marriage means more money spent on “me.”

Women are staying single longer and have more of their own disposable income than ever before. These young women have yet to be targeted or even recognized seriously by industries outside of luxury goods, apparel, and cosmetics, even though they earn substantial paychecks.

3. Lower birthrates globally mean fewer kids but more “stuff.”

When it comes to fertility rates, the numbers are down, particularly in industrialized countries. Unsurprisingly, people’s decision to have fewer kids has major implications for consumer spending patterns. But if you’re guessing that spending on kids is down, guess again.

4. The divorce economy means two of everything
.

Nearly half of all American marriages end in divorce, and divorce rates have increased across the world.
²
While the societal effects of broken marriages have been studied in great detail, the effects of divorce on the consumer economy have been underreported. The reality of divorce is that it unleashes a torrent of consumer spending—and not just on divorce lawyers.

5. The presence of more older women redefines target markets
.

Look at enough advertising briefs and you might think that everyone older than fifty-four is dead, or at the very least broke. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. The older population has been steadily increasing its numbers and will continue to do so for decades. By 2050, for the first time in human history, the global elderly will outnumber children.
³
The opportunities are as enormous as the population itself.

That’s the big picture. Now let’s get more specific about what this might mean to your business.

GLOBAL TREND #1

The Feminization of the Workforce

The global economic downturn has had countless implications, but one of the most notable is that women are now poised to overtake men in the American workforce for the first time in history.
⁴
The bread-winning woman has forever changed the face of the global economy.