Above: the super sucessful Old Spice ad campaign, targeting "women" to sell products to "men", for insight into the campaign creation click here
We like to joke about it, but a cliché is always based in truth. There really are some major differences between the way men and women behave psychologically, socially and as consumers. So it pays to understand those differences in more detail before committing time and money to your marketing campaign. Especially when you consider that the average consumer receives about 1500 brand messages a day. You have to be smart to stand out.
There are physical reasons for the fact that men are generally more mathematically-minded than women, why women are generally better at managing complexity, why men aren’t that great at talking about their feelings and why women occasionally suck at catching a ball. It’s all about the brain.
Men’s brains are about 10% bigger but it seems, from studies at the University of California-Irvine, that this is because men have more ‘grey matter’, which forms the brain’s different processing centres, while women have more ‘white matter’, which serves as wiring to connect the different centres. This may be why women handle complexity and multi-tasking better than men. And why men are less relational in their thinking. Men prefer black/white, yes/no scenarios while women are much more likely to say “It depends”.
Above: Very clever breast cancer awareness campaign - even super heros get brest cancer, click here for details
Men are also more left-hemisphere dominant, while women have a more even balance between the two hemispheres. So men are generally more task-oriented while women are more intuitive. The part of the brain that controls
numerical brain function is bigger in men, so they’re generally better at maths. (Not fair. ) But women have bigger limbic systems, which helps them get in touch with their emotions. And you can blame the thicker parietal region in the female brain for those ball-handling skills; it means women are less adept at mentally rotating objects and it therefore affects their spatial awareness.
But what does all this mean for marketing strategy?
Think about store layout. Men will desire and easily navigate a direct path to a product, women will be happy to browse through the whole shop and go off on tangents. Men tend to buy individual items while women think in ensembles.
Above: Highly contraversal California milk ad campaign that sparked huge debate and critism,
click here for more info
Think about key messages. Men want direct answers about a product; women focus more on how it will make them feel. Men are less likely to remember something from last year; women have better verbal memory and will recall what they’ve seen and heard about your product or a competitor’s.
It can’t be a one-size-fits-all solution. Men really are from Mars and women from Venus. Or, as the French say, vive la difference!
Grace xx
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Further Reading:
9 differences between the male and female brain
Marketing to men
His Brain Her Brain
