Tag Archives: role models

Marketing to women – can it really be this hard?

Posted on February 18, 2011 | 4 Comments

We started this blogsite and survey to find out where all of the bright, cool women that blazed a trail in their teens and 20s ended up in their 30s and 40s. Because if there’s one thing that we knew for sure, it was that they certainly didn’t end up running the world (in the shape of running huge organisations) in the way that they might have thought, or the way that they were led to believe when at school.

We started this because we ended up as two very rare beasts – working mums at director level in media agencies. We didn’t think this was unusual, it’s what we’d always thought we’d be able to do. We never thought that we’d be a minority, but we most definitely were. We didn’t truly understand that this was only possible because we had fantastic bosses who understood that effectiveness is not dependent on presence or set hours, but let us work how and when we wanted, as long as we continued to deliver and grow business. We didn’t know how rare that was until we started this site and survey.

Those who’ve been with us for a while will know how shocked we were to discover that, despite legislation, feminism and supposed equality, women still make up a measly 13% of board positions in the advertising industry – an almost unbelievable 3% drop from the 1970s.

Of course, this will come as no surprise to any of you who’ve had the misfortune to view a TV ad aimed squarely at ‘us women’ – because let’s face it, they’re not exactly hitting us between the eyes with extraordinary insight into the way we live our lives. Not exactly capturing the essence of our hopes and dreams in those precious few seconds of airtime. Even when viewed at x8 speed with the sound muted, the women we see rapidly acting out a brand’s dream don’t seem to have much to do with our everyday life.

And the truth is, we don’t know any women that like these ads. We’re not sure who connects with them, or feels even a spark of recognition for the women characters portrayed. None of the words that they say or the things that they tell us make us scream ‘yes, that’s me, that’s exactly me and my life’ in the way that say, reading an Allison Pearson or a Marion Keyes or even, hell yes, a David Nicholls makes us feel.

We’ve sunk a long way down since the days when Fay Weldon was creating ad straplines (working in advertising, in the ’60s, with one of our mothers – believe it or not). We’ll bet you can’t find one advert today that makes you want to buy the product because you connect with the model or the messaging. Which means that we’re buying these products in spite of the ads. The very ads that are meant to make us buy them. Crazy when you think about it.

Infuriating for us, as we’ve spent our working lives with brands – striving to create strategies that do connect with women (mainly busy mums who have literally seconds to decide whether to interact or not). It’s a received wisdom that that 85% of brand decisions are made by women – so we care passionately about trying to make sure that this smart, interesting, active majority are finding things to believe and love.

But really, why is it so hard to sell us breakfast cereal or shampoo in a way that we can relate to? Why are the women so unreal, the children as unrecognisable as any we’ve encountered – and the men so unfailingly complicit in this stereotype?

The campaigns get even worse when let lose in the wild west that many regard as social media. Just because we’re online doesn’t mean that we want to play a game, sign up to a trite campaign or endure endless ads in our social streams (yes Facebook, we’re talking to you).

We love the stuff that inspires, educates and informs in any other medium – books, films, tweets, blog posts, TED talks, galleries, theatre and beyond. And we fail to understand why an ad, with a massive budget backing it, can’t do any of these things. It should, at the very least, entertain and resonate. We’re too ready to find and enjoy the good things for brands to be doing us the disservice of serving up bad stuff.

And we can’t help thinking that in all honesty, if there were more women on the boards of advertising agencies, they wouldn’t let half this stuff out of the door…

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On women and work, Miriam O’Reilly, and creating positive role models

Posted on January 21, 2011 | 3 Comments

In 2010, we blogged, tweeted and even talked in the real world about a) how we need to showcase more positive professional female role models, b) the multilayered complexities of combining a satisfying professional life with a rewarding home and family life and c) the fact that women at board/director level in their 40s and beyond seem to be increasingly rare birds.

And three weeks into 2011, these issues seem even more all-consuming. The high-profile news stories of the last few weeks have really got us thinking.

Firstly, we have total respect for Miriam O’Reilly for standing up against her employers, being prepared to publicly confront difficult issues about women and age and forcing the BBC to back down.

But in parallel, we keep seeing reports that many young women don’t believe that going to university is worthwhile. Cosmopolitan have reported that nearly half of all young women who’ve been through university wish they hadn’t bothered. We have a feeling that people like Miriam O’Reilly will be tearing her hair out. If she’s prepared to take on the BBC to make it easier for women to work after their 30s and early 40s, we suspect she’ll despair of women not wanting to work at all.

And we’ve recently seen a piece of research that suggests that women would rather marry ‘up’ and stay at home, rather than work. It suggests that only 19% of women actually want to work, and that 64% of women would rather stay at home – and many of these women are not currently married or mothers. Rather they’re planning on this happening.

All of this seems to contradict our own experiences that suggest that many women would love to be able to do something for themselves – maybe not a full time, 7-7 City job, but have a way of having their own income, their own space and do something for themselves.

Children or no children, we’re worried by the idea that women would actively seek – from a young age – to be financially dependent on her partner. In our own research from last year, almost none of our respondents liked the idea that they were living off someone else – although many were staying at home to look after their children. The key point, as we see it, is that the young women in the research above are actively setting out with an aim to not work, and not achieve for themselves, and we think that’s a poor outlook for women and our economy if that’s truly the case.

It’s a sorry state of affairs to us that any women wants to live like this, and that any young woman aspires to this. Of course there will always be times in any relationship, if you’re in one, when one person’s career takes precedent, but to plan to be financially dependent on a man is not only foolish, it’s highly risky. If you set yourself up as something to be bought, don’t be surprised when you get replaced, discarded or upgraded.

One of our aims this year is to reach out to other generations of women. Women 20 years older than us who are fighting the battle against ageism. Women younger than us who crave positive role models and mentors who can help them see a future that doesn’t involve vacuous celebrity. We’ve been lucky enough to meet some amazing sixth-formers, led by their inspirational teacher Charlotte (tweeting as @talktoteens). Being part of their professional mentoring project has been truly gratifying, and we urge all of you bright, cool professional women to show the next generation down that yes, work can be knackering, challenging, harder than you ever thought possible, and not always a breeze – but that the alternative is so much worse. There truly is no better feeling than going to bed knowing that no-one owns you, and you owe no-one. Ladies, don’t let yourself be bought.

Kath and Fiona

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