WHY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY ISN’T CHRISTMAS

What your brand needs to be doing NOW to really engage female audiences 

International Women’s Day (IWD) 2018 was a watershed moment for brands. So many brands used IWD as an opportunity to show their support for women and equality, with varying levels of success. There are pitfalls aplenty for brands who are tiptoeing (and steamrollering!) into this area. As the only agency in the UK that specialises in helping brands to connect with women, we’ve got a thing or two we’d like to share about it.

We wanted to highlight the good, the bad and the ugly and give some top tips on how brands can get marketing to women right.

Marketing to women 1.0 – pink it and shrink it

The good news is that most brands have moved on from Marketing to women 1.0. This is the pink it and shrink it approach, where brands fall into the classic (and awful) mistake of ‘pinkifying’ or gender-washing their product range/packaging/ advertising to women. It’s a turn-off and a recipe for a backlash.

When McDonald’s decided to turn their M into a W for International Women’s day to celebrate their 63% female employees, they came dangerously close to doing this. Just “celebrating” female empowerment with a stunt, without any tangible action to lead change is tokenism at its best. As one commentator pointed out, “don’t celebrate empowered, sort out the gender pay gap”. 

Marketing to women 2.0 – celebrate and donate

 Most sensible brands and agencies realise that it’s not enough just to celebrate IWD and that contributing in a tangible way is essential. Very often the “easy” way to do this is to donate a percentage to a female-focused cause. At SuperHuman we call this Marketing to women 2.0. It’s good – it’s definitely a step on the 1.0’s pink it and shrink stage, but it still has an air of tokenism about it. It’s “campaign period” support that can appear as though a brand is jumping on the IWD and female empowerment bandwagon.

For IWD 2018 there were a few brands that fell into this trap this year, including Johnnie (Jane) Walker and Brewdog. The intention was good, great in fact. But these kinds of activities lack depth and are undermined by their short-termism. The brand halo effect is tainted by the fact that they lack any long-term commitment to facilitating female empowerment in a practical way.

See, here’s the rub. The problem is that IWD isn’t Christmas. It’s not a “campaign period” to engage female customers. It should be a true commitment that is sustained, long-term and embedded in your business that is activated 365 days of the year. Not just something that brands announce on IWD, expecting a pat on the back. Uber is a great example of this with their #drivingwomen campaign. Their driver business model (love it or hate it) creates flexible work opportunities for women. It’s helping women and, in our opinion, gives them the right to celebrate some of the successes on IWD.

Marketing to women 3.0 – taking action to fix a shared problem

This brings us to Marketing to women 3.0 where brands take support to the next level. In 3.0 they don’t just donate, they take action, identifying and addressing a problem that the brand makes a practical, tangible attempt to fix. Big or small, it’s a bugbear or problem that is shared with their consumers and makes sense for a brand in the category to have a point of view on.

Nissan’s campaign to teach female drivers in Saudi Arabia is a fantastic example of this. Barbie’s range of inspiring dolls for IWD 2018 is another great example of addressing a shared problem. When it’s executed well, it is demonstrable and admired near and far. It’s a win-win situation creating a halo effect for the brand and real tangible improvement for women.

Using IWD to engage female (and arguably enlightened male) customers requires more than a once per year, paint your packaging pink, give a good cause some money approach. It also requires the business to ensure that they have their housekeeping in order. It’s no good shouting about IWD and female empowerment, when you are underpaying your female staff or not addressing inherent masculine bias in your organisation (this is a massive topic in itself and perhaps one for another blog!). To be truly brand enhancing, it needs to be fully committed to across the business, and not just for a campaign “period”.

Credit: Twitter @Barbie

If you’d like to talk to us more about how your brand can build engagement with female audiences by doing things that actually make a difference, get in touch here.