It’s International Women’s Day. A wonderful occasion to celebrate achievements and progress and spotlight issues and causes that continue to plague our society. And there are a lot of both. Their diverse range characterizes the inscrutable pattern of women’s preferences and interests, underscoring the ineffectiveness and lunacy of attempts to market to them as a homogenous group.
It’s a waste of everyone’s time. When brands market to women (or any segment based on a singular demographic property), they’re shooting arrows in the dark–guessing they’re getting in front of the right people (which is not necessarily true) while alienating the other valuable targets outside the scope of their blind criteria.
Brands must speak to women as individuals. Through dynamic profiles, marketers can engage the woman based on her unique (demonstrated, not just supposed) behavior and preferences. In some situations, gender may be a relevant factor in that profile, but only in the context of many other data points.
That context and comprehensive, dynamically changing profile breaths life into an otherwise one dimensional, static concept based on fruitless guesses to answer the other existential question– “what are women about?” If only it were that easy.
It can be though. All it takes is treating your customers with R-E-S-P-E-C-T (baby, just a little bit).
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