A 1989 study, entitled ”The New Diversity” and commissioned by Self, examined the lives of 1,177 randomly selected females ages 18 to 49. It came to be called ”The New Diversity” because modern women, unlike their homemaker mothers, ”live in transition. . . . Today`s career woman may be tomorrow`s full-time mother and the future`s career woman again. . . . Few women can be permanently pigeon-holed in a single role.”
American women generally feel in control of their lives, the study shows, and derive a sense of competence from their work, in or out of the home, whether they have a job, marriage and children all at once or in what the study calls ”life phases.”
Time is a considerable luxury, and the pressures are great. As a result, the American woman of the `90s resents marketing messages about superwomen and ”having it all.” Women know they just aren`t true.
And, the study says, ”Any service or product that saves time and provides real value would be welcome. . . . The craving for time also elicits a craving for treats, rewards and stress-reducers.”
Perhaps the most difficult-to-manage discovery of all is that there are no role models for this demanding, shifting-sands of a life, the study says. There is mostly just getting on with it. There is mostly, as Nike says, just doing it.
The Self study has been distributed widely in the advertising industry. Charlotte Moore and Janet Champ spent hours reading aloud comments from women in the study before they planned the Nike ads.
And before the study, some perceptive marketers already had figured out its principles for themselves, based on their own feelings and research. For example, Alberto-Culver`s success with Static Guard and Mrs. Dash came from Carol Burnick`s real life, coupled with product testing.
”I needed Static Guard and my husband needed Mrs. Dash. Ideas come from the needs of people,” says Burnick, a Culver group vice president and director. ”I always preach, `Understand the consumer; understand the consumer.` ”
It`s a principle that advertising agencies specializing in blacks and other minorities also recognize. ”If there`s a TAB ad with a slender white woman on the beach, that doesn`t speak to African-American women. How many blacks live the beach experience?” asks Anna Morris, executive vice president and chief creative officer for Burrell Advertising, Inc., in Chicago.
”You`ve got to be black. The average American doesn`t cringe when somebody says, `You people.` ”
Segmentation
While the majority of new product development and advertising is still based on demographics and cost per thousand, the marketing world is beginning to understand that it succeeds best and easiest when it addresses smaller pieces of people`s lives, if not their attitudes and emotions.
They call the trend ”segmentation.” It means that as business is more competitive-more products and more commercials trying to get attention for them-sales are made when marketers break through the clutter by targeting a clearly defined niche of buyers.
They hit the target increasingly through an equally specialized media:
magazines narrowly focused on one sport or one lifestyle; special-interest sections of newspapers; cable TV channels such as Arts & Entertainment or Discovery.
”A cat lover with a finicky cat will buy our 9 Lives,” says Barbara Thomas, vice president and group research director for Leo Burnett in Chicago. ”It matters not whether she`s a working woman or a non-working woman. Advertising to women doesn`t make sense; we advertise to cat lovers.”
Nissan advertises to a segment it calls ”enthused buyers” who love to drive, not men or women, whatever the seeming focus of its two 240SX commercials, says L.C. Mueller, a Nissan spokesman.
Those two commercials are almost an accident, he adds. They were made simply to have two spots to test before buying expensive TV time. To the company`s surprise, both tested well and were broadcast.
”We really don`t know why both did very well. We were just pleasantly surprised,” he says.
Automobile companies have taken the lead in non-traditional advertising to women, especially in magazines, but not because of some notion of equality and social conscience. They got savvy through a combination of stiff competition and research showing the numbers of cars women buy.
Even so, they just hate to say they advertise to women. ”We don`t really view females as a market per se. It`s what their needs are,” says J.W. Qualman Jr., general director of advertising for the Buick division of General Motors.
Buick and other car companies often run the same ads in women`s and men`s magazines, he adds: ”Women are looking for the same thing as any car buyer, although safety does tend to be more important-and reliability.”
But watch what they do, as much as what they say. Buick ads now appear in 20 clearly identifiable women`s publications out of a total of 80 magazines.
The company also produced a leasing ad specifically for women. Leasing appeals to women, Qualman says, because it is a process similar to the way women buy other products-a fixed price without the trials of bargaining and negotiating.
Buick dealers are encouraged to decorate their showrooms in a way more pleasing to women, with wood and brass, not steel and plastic, Qualman says.
Women also figure prominently in product planning, although Qualman is careful to talk about the generic ”buying public.” Increasing attention is paid to seats, pedals and control panels so small people, mostly women, can see and operate the car.
And then, he concedes, there is the issue of fingernails: ”Women do tend to have fingernails, so controls are set up for that. Breaking a nail? We try to avoid that at all costs.” So much so, he adds, that Buick engineers can sometimes be seen at lunch with long fingernails taped to their digits to see how they feel.
Pink-phobia
While the realities of the marketplace have led automobile companies to focus on women, other traditionally male products have not felt the bottom-line pressure significantly enough to get them advertising in vehicles closely identified with women, especially liberated ones.
In a new advertising-less edition of the revived Ms. magazine, Gloria Steinem tells of the magazine`s early travails trying to convince advertisers that women buy big-ticket products. Ms. did finally get car stereo ads ”now and then” and an occasional IBM personal computer ad, but no VCRs and no other computers. ”In the electronics world, women and technology seem mutually exclusive,” Steinem writes.
Adds Self`s Marianne Howatson: ”Forty percent of business travelers are women, but we can`t find any hotels willing to advertise. They think women don`t decide where they stay or they stay at cheap places. On the contrary, women stay at more expensive places, often for their safety.”
TV network attempts to attract car and beer spots to soap operas this fall are likely to meet similar resistance. Buick`s Qualman says his company is very happy with prime-time, thank you. An unnamed media director for a large beer account told Advertising Age, ”Beer brands don`t want their
`badge` or image feminized with daytime programming.”
The problem appears to be, at least in part, pink-phobia. Dodge still gets a laugh for its pink La Femmes, produced in the 1960s. Nike worried that it might lose some of its male customers if the shoe became identified with women. A marketing executive explained to Gloria Steinem that credit cards took a long time to begin advertising in women`s magazines because, ”They were afraid of having a `pink` card,” he said.
Self`s Howatson predicts that companies will learn only when woman-focused advertising has a positive effect on profits. Still, the publisher says she`s encouraged. She takes heart from Armstrong Tile ads now appearing in Self, since they usually run in decorating magazines.
”They have recognized that it isn`t only the traditional woman who is interested in their tiles. It`s an enormous breakthrough,” she says.
And real women appear to appreciate the breakthroughs. Those ”Just do it” Nike ads have been torn out and tacked up on walls all over America-so much so that Nike perforated one edge of the most recent group to make the pages easier to tear out.
And then there`s Kate Agneberg. The St. Paul, Minn., high school student was struck by Nike`s ad in the February Glamour. It intoned, ”Face lifts;
body tucks; liposuction . . . the 60-minute makeover from Nike. . . . What you do with your body is up to you. So change it from within . . . just do it.”
Agneberg wrote the company, ”Thanks for helping me realize that a natural makeover is more important than a chemical one.”
