Proof That You Must Approach Marketing To Women Different From Marketing To Men!

Most beer advertising is to do with the concept of "belonging." Being "one of the lads." Almost all UK brewer marketing departments, ad agencies and most others anywhere else (including TBWA Netherlands where this ad was conceived) try to hit (and therefore depict) the concept of what we in the advertising industry call "vivid me."

"Vivid me" is that time in the evening when you and your mates have had a few pints, everyone is having a laugh, everything seems to be going great, everyone is on form. Often this is thought of as around 9 to 9:30pm.

In other cases the focus is simply on the belonging. See almost every beer commercial you can think of. Regardless of time of day, country of origin or most other variables.

Often there is indeed a gag where the wimpy guy in the group makes an ass of himself. Or it can simply play on the p*ss taking and one-upmanship that happens between regular blokes.

Three of four years ago we redefined Coors Brewers' UK brand Carling in these terms and pushed it to the point of actually having the strap simply as "belong."

This was the great strategy we brought in, however, despite our advice the guys up in Burton on Trent insisted on a futile attempt to gentrify Carling through the creative work! To essentially yuppify it! LOL!

For the creative execution Trevor Beattie and his company BMB won the pitch and proceeded to totally mess it all up. Crazy ads with flocks of birds etc. Although pretty cool to watch and accompanied by a banging track by Hard Fi called "Living for the Weekend." it all semed like it would all fall into place nicely. It worked beautifully on paper and their presentation was amazing.

But, the predictable result?

The ads alienated their existing customers. The yuppies laughed at it and continued to drink their little bottled beers crammed with a lime, pinkie cocked. Carling lost market share.

The "belong" strategy simply works. And it does so in this and many other markets. Particularly when targeting men. It always has. Every guy wanted to be just like the Marlboro man, for example.

Use of such a belonging strategy with women is very visible in automotive advertising in cases of little sporty hatchbacks marketed to young professional independent women. The man is often portrayed as a bit of an idiot and the tag gag is always a kind of "Tut. Men, huh?" nod to the girls.

Everyone wants to belong to *something* and we marketers have known for a very long time that prospects define themselves by their purchases. We just exploit this to make them feel as though they belong to our gang by buying our products.

In the IM space think of Frank Kern, J-mo, the good old Stompernet boys band again, Jeff Walker and the rest of their guru mastermind group clique. I'd love to see some sort of study about how much of their market share is attributed to this concept of belonging.

Keep your eyes open, you'll see it everywhere. Across countless sectors and whole markets.

The real lesson;

Offer a sense of belonging in your marketing and you'll literally have people flocking to your products. This is not gender specific, but rather context and product specific.

[edit: this rough outline was detailed exceptionally well recently in Seth Godin's "Tribes," if I remember correctly.]


Thomas