Marketing to Women in A Man’s World

Nowadays, advertising is everywhere.

It’s what draws us to buy new products from the shops, it encourages us to find out more about new art, music & writing, and it publicises politics out in the real world. 

Unfortunately, the interests, needs & requirements of women are seldom the first thoughts of the PR teams that create posters, leaflets and various other kinds of advertising that we see around our local towns and cities, and delivered on our doorsteps. 

Yeah, there’s ads you see on TV and on your local billboards that might seem to be aimed at women, but it’s not hard to see that the usually male dominated teams behind these works completely misunderstand the way women think! 

If a publication typically aimed at women doesn’t focus on shocking unrealistic beauty standards like hair removal and weight loss, marriage, children & the home or sex appeal, then you’re probably dreaming, because the truth is, advertisements remain to be sexist and reliant on past stereotypes about women to market towards females in the modern era, and to put it straight, it doesn’t work! 

Women represent 85% of all purchasing decisions but somehow, the catering of advertisement campaigns always seems to go towards men instead. 

This is incredibly unsurprising seeing as creative executives tend to be men anyway - in fact, only 10% of all women who do happen to work in the marketing industry ever experience their work being put forward for professional review and awards, so why would women want to enter a career in such a department?

Ultimately, the representation for women in publications is going to become less and less as numbers of us employed in these areas continue to dwindle.

Men fail to represent us without our input unfortunately, and women’s voices deserve to be heard around the PR tables in every office block across the UK.

Next week, I’ll be talking about women & the pro-gaming community - why are we so small in numbers compared to male pro-gamers? Are we inherently less talented, and therefore less inclined to get involved, or are we just not encouraged due to gatekeeping of the activity?

Find out more prior to my next article with this link