There’s probably more than a few analogies between Men, Women, Marketers and Consumers.
Here they are minus the “more than” :
As Gary Larson points out in this hilarious and beautifully poetic comic strip “The Far Side”, Men are rather preoccupied with thoughts of Women, while Women on the other hand are, shall we say, not so enamored with the average Male.
Marketers think of Consumers constantly. They believe that in order to get Consumers to like them, they just need to understand and connect with them. But the harsh reality is that Consumers don’t really care an awful lot about the average Brand. Consumers may have a preference, but that hardly means that their relationship with a Brand is anything to get too excited about….it’s mostly only transient. Furthermore, from a Consumers’ perspective – there is very little difference between Brands. Once in a while one comes along, knocks their socks off and is deserving of their undivided attention… but that’s a rarity.
Interestingly, we can reverse the roles by way of a concept put forth by John Gray, Ph.D., in his best seller “Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus”, only this time it applies more specifically to some forms of Digital Advertising. Men and Women react to stress in two completely different ways. Men more or less flip a switch and tune out. They then go build something in the garage, turn on a ball game, go for a drive, knock back a few Highballs, etc.. Then, they come back to re-examine the problem later from a new (perhaps more hung over) perspective. Women don’t “get” that. When a women becomes stressed, she wants to talk (even if, according to Gray, the act of talking doesn’t necessarily solve the problem). This can be a source of tension, like 2 magnets of the same pole. So here, Men are like Consumers and Women are like Online Behavioral Advertisers; as messaging tries harder to communicate by getting more personal and more intrusive, Consumers are more likely to withdraw and tune out the sensory assault (dopey Consumers!).
There are a lot of false assumptions, platitudes and plausibility’s that act as the foundation for much of an advertisers marketing activities. As I mentioned in previous posts here and here, it’s a good time for everyone to Stop and take a Deep Breath.
“The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn” – Gloria Steinman
