Tom Peters highly recommends the book, “EVEolution:The Eight Truths of Marketing to Women” by Faith Popcorn & Lys Marigold (buy it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net).
In his generic presentation on Re-Imagine, Peters extracts some key learnings for anyone who takes women seriously as a market (and everyone should!). Each of these thoughts links marketing to women very strongly with the connection economy mantra we preach here.
- Connecting your female consumers to each other connects them to your brand
- The ‘Connection Proclivity’ in women starts early. When asked, ‘How was school today?’ a girl usually tells her mother every detail of what happened, while a boy might grunt, ‘Fine.’
- Women don’t buy brands. They join them.
In typical Peters style, he then has his Women 10:
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1. Men and women are different.
2. Very different.
3. VERY, VERY DIFFERENT.
4. Women & Men have a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y nothing in common.
5. Women buy lotsa stuff.
6. WOMEN BUY A-L-L THE STUFF.
7. Women’s Market = Opportunity No. 1.
8. Men are (STILL) in charge.
9. MEN ARE … TOTALLY, HOPELESSLY CLUELESS ABOUT WOMEN.
10. Women’s Market = Opportunity No. 1.
I don’t agree with every one of his points, but I think I get the point!
Re. women, I think Tom Peters has a point. Men don’t get women, but then to be fair we don’t really get men so it works both ways, so yes, we know that the two genders are different, very different – I think people are becoming aware of that, but how is that changing the way that they work. I have seen a lot of material concessions made to women in the work place – more flexibility in hours, leave, pay, promotion, crèche facilities etc but I still notice that companies don’t “get women�. They think that the above is all they need to do to make them happy, but women still have to work in an environment which is aggressive, where women have to put on a sharp suit rather than a flowing skirt to get taken seriously. In other words they have to take on this masculine persona when they walk into the office and spend their day in their “masculine energy� to feel that they can be taken seriously. My experience has been that you are either the secretary (which is more than okay), or you are some sexless being that sort of merges in to become “one of the guys� – that is if you have a good working relationship with them, if you don’t, you are that “cool, hard bitch� – which I have long since interpreted as “the one that scares us shitless cos she has power and we are threatened by it cos women are not supposed to have power�.
I went to a very interesting workshop earlier this year – women and wealth. All the participants (about 35 women) were young and super successful career women, and with the exception of one, all were single (that one was an ex-IBM consultant who had quit her job at her partner’s request and stayed at home or did the “lunch circuit�). These women all admitted that they were not single by choice, but because they found that they had become so driven and hard in an effort to compete in the business world that they had becoming intimidating and their relationships failed. What was interesting about this workshop was the open admission that all the women no longer wanted to work like that. They still wanted their careers, but they wanted them to be more in sync with their feminine identity, ie less aggressive, more co-operative, more sensitive, more open, less politics etc. They were not worried about the hours, the day-care etc, they just wanted to not have to put on a sharp suit and an invisible armour shield when they went to work, and they did not want to have to worry about how their partners were coping with their higher incomes at the end of the month. So no, as Keith says, women should not have to box, but why do they still feel they must?
Bronwyn,
Certainly you are joking. I mean… It’s as if you want the world to bend to fit what will make “Women� wealthy, comfortable, not have to be on time, and not have to work hard to have it. I don’t disagree that women are as capable as men in the work place and deserve an equal shot at proving themselves. But at what point do you expect that women have a right to work less than their male counter parts simply because of their gender? What’s even funnier is that you some how think that on top of not coming to work on time, solving inter department disputes (politics), or even dressing the part of a professional… they should be paid more and men should like it. Wipe the fairy dust out of your eyes and join the real world. The women’s movement was very necessary to allow woman the right to do a man’s work to get a man’s pay. I don’t think the women’s movement was about working about as hard as a stoned teenager and getting paid like a rockstar.
I’m sorry if my words seem spiteful but the problem was that when woman’s suffrage was addressed the result was that men that could support their families solely on one salary now had to send their wives to work just to get by. Making these changes left families without mothers in the home. I’m not saying a woman’s place is in the home but more so that she should have the option of taking care of her family instead of leaving that up to MTV and the Play Station. In solving one problem our government has inadvertently created a plethora of other problems for families. If women are unhappy with how hard it is to do a job the answer is not to pay them more and require less from them. What is needed is an economic solution to allow the right for a woman to work but not the necessity. Of course every thing I am standing on is the idea that families are our most vital resource as a nation. Nothing against homosexuals but they create an economic challenge when it comes to solving these issues. Either the gays end up getting more than their fair share or less than what they’ve earned. I don’t know how to solve this yet but if Bob marries Bill and we give tax cuts to married folks. Something is wrong with that scenario.