Allergies, illness, or something has taken over and made me really lethargic, headachey, and scrambled lately which is why this post is both slightly old news, and slightly all over the place… but I hope you enjoy all the same!
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For a month or two of my life ( in between wanting to be a teacher, psychologist, or writer) I decided I should go into marketing. I’m creative, I reasoned, I could be good at coming up with slogans and advertisement ideas. I never changed my major but news like this makes me think I should have… the decision-makers of the advertising world apparently need smart women (and men!) to explain to them that not all women (or people for that matter) are alike and marketing to the gender binary is not going to turn out well for them, at least not now as we enter further into the 21st century. (They should join us!)
Recently, two advertising campaigns (from Dell and Mars) have caught my eye due to their sheer stupidity. The common thread? Both campaigns were aimed at women… but I’m struggling to see how even a single woman could have been involved with the creation of these campaigns. Surely, if they had asked a woman what she thought she would have been able to explain to them that women are not all variations on the same stereotype and, for instance, probably won’t respond as well as they are expecting to a sparkly, pink-packaged, low-fat chocolate bar or a miniaturized computer that comes in enough colors to go with every outfit and has an appropriate girl-y name (Della).
According to the marketing world there are only a few ways one can market a product to women:
1) Make it pink & sparkly! I mean, it worked for Stephanie Meyer and her sparkly vampires. As Cara of Feministe put it, “Fling is a new chocolate bar that’s aimed at women. You can tell, because the packaging is pink.” The Della laptops may not all be pink, I’ll give them that, but the pink one does come with the added bonus of a donation to a Breast Cancer Charity (none of the other laptops have a charity attached) and they’re still marketed as “adorable” and “cute” because that’s what women care about, adorable and cute computers, not, you know, functional and durable ones.
2) Make it low fat because all women care about losing weight, unlike men who don’t need to diet constantly and, therefore, can enjoy “man candy” like Snickers and M&Ms. (Not that women don’t eat these candies too… something has to put on the weight that needs to be dieted off!) Even Della’s new laptops manage to buy into the “low fat” trend – a quick look into the website’s “tech tips” shows us that our laptops can be used to help us remember to exercise and even look up low-fat recipes! (As this article outlines, since I started writing this article the website has already changed – the recipe tip is gone and the exercise tip has become “get moving” but still…)
3) Make it teeny – Its not a chocolate bar its a chocolate finger because women, with their diets and whatnot, cannot handle a chocolate bar. Similarly, the Della computers are miniaturized – I suppose to fit into our purses better or something? Smaller laptops have their place, I won’t deny that, but to focus the marketing of these computers specifically onto women is where the gender stereotyping and fail comes in.
Imagine Today 