NORTHERN PLANNER

I wrote this a while back for something or other. Thought it was worth sharing. I don't pretend to understand the mysteries of the better sex, but I thought these were OK thoughts for people (men) in my predicament….

"David Ogilvy would have been a great ad man on any era. Sure, the pipe and braces might not have gone down as well today, his views on avoiding humour at all costs seem out of place these days, but let's not forget what he thought about women.

"The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything." Even back in the heyday of the ‘Mad Men’, he knew that brands underestimated women at their peril, today that's never been more important. Paying due attention to women does not signify a return to a seventies feminist doctrine or a mere sense of 'fairness' - it just makes business sense.

In the UK, a woman's disposable income has shot up by 50% in the last 20 years; today they’ll make 80% of all buying decisions while in twenty years time, they’ll be the main earner in a quarter of households and account for over half of UK millionaires, according to the Future Foundation. But it’s just not about share of the purse strings, it’s about influence too.

The performance consultancy Catalyst found that companies with more women in senior management earn their companies a higher return on their equity. They’re increasingly climbing the corporate ladder as the economy continues to shift towards knowledge based services and creativity. The future currency will be one of collaboration, communication, teamwork and democratisation. These are all female traits that are associated with the 'right brain', as opposed to the male 'left brain', which is more skilled at logic, systems and hard data.

The future is definitely female, but a shift in targeting will not be enough, there’s a need to examine and possibly change long held assumptions about how marketing is supposed to work. If we’re going to capitalise on the emergence of the financially empowered, influential women of today and tomorrow, we’re going to have to find a new ‘act’, that’s based on how women think, and behave.

The last 50 to 100 years of marketing and brand building was mostly built by blokes. Methodologies have been codified; conventional wisdom has been institutionalized, leading to a bunch of well ingrained habits. This is OK. This has gotten us somewhere, it’s created some interesting and useful things, not to mention some great brands, but peel back the layers of brand awareness, brand onions and such and you tend to find that most brands are built on, and for, the way men think, not women. Mostly, it’s about USP’s, objects and ‘benefits’ –  all that ‘left brained’ stuff men do so well.

Engaging with women properly will require brands using the ‘left side’ of their brain too. That means more ‘feelings, people, relationships and what things do’; not just ‘action, objects, self-interest and how things work’. That’s got implications for marketing, branding, the communications job, media and even NPD.

Brands that want a bigger share of the future will have to get really good at their relationship with women, which will mean approaching all sorts of marketing and brand questions in a different way. David Ogilvy wasn’t right about everything but he was more right about women than he realised."