SheMarketing eNews 18

Welcome to issue 18 of SheMarketing eNews 

Hello

In our new regular qualitative research program, Shevesdrop , the most common complaint we hear from our over 50, Young At Heart segment is that marketers misunderstand them at best, totally ignore them at worst.

When you turn 50, you fall off the radar, you cease to exist" said one.

There's a huge market out there for over 60 ladies and nobody is doing anything about it" mused another.

When we talk to them more specifically about marketing campaigns and key messages that do and don't resonate with them, it becomes clear that many marketers completely misunderstand a day in the life of today's 60-year old woman.

At morning tea time she is not at home having a cup of tea and doing the crossword. She is probably at a social event or planning her bathroom renovation or upcoming trip to Italy with three other women.

In the afternoon she isn't watching Oprah or Days of Our lives while doing the ironing. Chances are she has outsourced the ironing and is on ebay bidding on an electrical item.

At 7:00pm she is not shuffling around in her dressing gown preparing dinner. She is probably at a restaurant or maybe at her weekly yoga class.

We call them Young at Hearts because they are just that - they don't like to be defined by their age. They are not depressed, menopausal, frail stay-at-home old ladies. They have a positive outlook on life and are enjoying some self-indulgent 'me-time', many for the first time after devoting their life to a husband and children for 20 or 30 years. They express this new found independence in the form of purchases such as a lavish bathroom renovation.

As one said in describing this new phase in her life, she is building a list of 'me things' that she will work through over the next 10 or 20 years. And no doubt enjoy every moment.

n addition to marketing goods and services to the Young at Heart segment, the future marketing challenge will be retaining and maximising them in the workplace. Read on to find out how and why 55+ women are predicted to be the workforce of the future.

In this issue we also look at the critical success factors in a cause related marketing campaign - what works and what doesn't.

We have also released details about our upcoming full day marketing to women bootcamp in April. We have secured some of the best minds in the business and encouraged them to share their secrets of successful marketing to women with you. The day will be packed with the latest research, insights, strategies and case studies. Book before this Friday and you will pay the earlybird special of just $495 and your ticket includes an advance copy of our new SheMarketing Pack, valued at $250

I look forward to seeing you there. Click here to learn more and book online.

Regards,

Amanda Stevens

P.S. If you can't make the full day bootcamp, we have exclusive half-day executive round tables coming up in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Auckland. Click here to review our full events schedule.


Regards,


 

  charities & awards
  programs

   The five critical success factors
   of cause-related marketing
   campaigns

  older women will be
  the flexible workforce
  of the future>>

   New research reveals that
   women over 55 are staying
   in the workforce for longer.

  SheMarketing Loves

  SheMarketing Loathes

  About Splash >>

   More information about our
   research, strategy, creative,
   design, marketing, media, pr
   and events services.

  Contact Splash >>

   Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland.
 

Charities & Awards Programs

// A unique opportunity to connect

In the last decade there has been explosion of choice in products and services.

Visit your local Woolworths supermarket and you will find eighteen different options for washing powder, six brands of self-raising flour and five choices of raw sugar.

With categories that are more or less commodotised and with little price differentiation, how do you decide on the brand to take home with you?

Similarly in the services industry, competition has never been fiercer. A generation ago, getting a mortgage involved a meeting with your local bank manager. Today, Google search 'mortgages' and you will be overwhelmed with choice and be directed to websites that encourage you to directly compare the rates and offerings of a hundred different home loan providers.

The power of choice is well and truly in the hands of today's consumer, making the struggle for brand differentiation more difficult than ever.

With this plethora of choice and an extremely limited window of opportunity to get your message across, how do you differentiate your brand in the hearts and minds of female consumers?

Take two brands of equal standing on all other fronts, eight times out of ten women will choose, and be loyal to, the one that is active in the community and supporting the causes that are important to women.

Aligning your brand with a cause can be one of the easiest and most powerful ways to connect with women. However, keep in mind that how you structure and communicate the support of a charity or cause can have a significant impact on the success of your initiative in resonating with your female audience.

In our experience, there are five critical success factors in any cause-related marketing campaign

1. Relevance to your product.
   
   This might sound pretty obvious but I am amazed at how many campaigns I see where a brand is supporting a cause that maybe a worthy one, but there is very little link to the product. All causes are important, but it is best to choose one that is an obvious and believable fit with your product category. For example, Electolux vacuum cleaners have a product specifically designed for homes with pets. Their support of the RSPCA is far more relevant than if they were to support an African Orphanage.
   
   
2. Relevance to your consumer.
   
   Again, a fairly obvious criteria but one surprisingly absent in many cause-related marketing initiatives. The key to identifying relevance is consumer research. Find out what your particular consumer segment cares about ... which causes do they want your brand to support? Involve them in the discussion and the result will be a charity alignment that truly resonates with your audience. This may vary across life stage segments but one common factor will emerge - charity begins at home. No matter which female segments you are speaking to, they will be more likely to resonate with your support of a local cause rather than an overseas one.
   
   
3. Emotive and unique.
   
   Pull at her heartstrings and you will reach her wallet. Harness her heightened emotive signals in your cause marketing campaign and build commonality and empathy with her via a message that says 'we care, you care.' Make your campaign different with emotive images and an integrated approach, rather than just slapping the charity's logo on your existing campaign.
   
   Ralph Lauren have done this brilliantly with their ongoing Pink Pony Campaign. They have not just tacked on their support of breast cancer research to their existing marketing efforts, they have developed a special range of Pink Pony Clothing, with all monies raised going to breast cancer research. This approach has enabled them to engage the support of a host of celebrities, eager to lend their faces to a campaign that puts the cause at the centre of the brand rather than the other way round.
   
   
4. Involve consumer contribution.
   
   When supporting a cause, there are a couple of different ways to approach it. You can make a hefty and impressive up-front donation and communicate that to consumers - 'Hey, aren't we a great company, we just donated $50,000 to breast cancer research!' Another, more effective strategy is to involve your customers directly in the fund-raising ... 'for every widget you purchase, we will donate 10% to breast cancer research.' This delivers two key benefits to your campaign - firstly, the consumer feels that she is directly involved in the fundraising, giving her a sense of personal ownership and contribution and secondly, it gives you an opportunity to communicate the initiative multiple times, providing updates and new developments to the campaign.
   
   
5. Maintain a commercial objective. This might sound slightly controversial, but your number one objective for a cause marketing campaign should be to increase sales of your product. I must admit, it took me a little while to get my head around this concept as it is almost at odds with the essence of charity fundraising.
   
   I was first forced to think about cause related marketing in these terms after hearing a keynote address last year from the Global Chairman of Coca Cola, highlighting the campaign which involved Mount Franklin Water's alignment with the National Breast Cancer Foundation. In presenting the outstanding results of the campaign (by simply changing the colour of the bottle tops from blue to pink over an initial ten week period, sales increased by over 100%), he maintained that throughout the campaign, the organisation's number one objective was to increase sales of product. When he said this, you could hear an audible gasp in the room full of marketing, sponsorship and charity executives. He then presented a very clear, concise and irrefutable argument - that by maintaining that commercial sales objective, Coca Cola was able to raise maximum dollars for the National Breast Cancer Foundation. As it was a percentage deal, more sales meant more money for the Foundation. Hard to argue with and although it may be difficult to reconcile for the true altruistics among us, it is a proven model and ultimately what is best for the charity involved..
   

Older women will be the flexible workforce of the future

// new research reveals that women over the age of 55 are staying in the workforce for longer.

In a report released last week on the Australian labour market, the workforce of the future will consist of more women and more over-55s.

Global consultancy group Mercer, in its Workplace 2012 report, found that the number of employees aged over 55 years will increase by 14%, or 224,000 people, by 2012. Older employees will make up nearly 17% of the workforce.

By contrast, growth the number of employees in 25 to 45 age group will be only 5%.

Women will stay in the workforce for longer, with a projected 19% increase in the number of working women aged more than 55 by 2012. Older men's participation will increase by 10%.

"The research debunks the perception that employers should focus on attracting and retaining Generation-Y workers, because the reality is that older employees will make up a considerable proportion of the workforce," says Mercer's head of retirement business, Tim Jenkins.

"In four short years there will be close to a quarter of a million more workers aged 55-plus in the Australian labour force, and assumptions about what an employer should expect from an employee, and vice versa, have to change."

This research presents a challenge for organisations to take measures now to ensure this opportunity is fully maximised.

For a complimentary in-house presentation on how to attract and retain female employees and understand needs at different life stages, call our strategic research director Jessica Lai on +61 2 8394 6206.

SheMarketing Loves

SheMarketing Loathes

The danger of the disconnect

There has been a lot of talk in the industry about the Commonwealth Bank's campaign where an American advertising agency pitches a ridiculous, over the top television commercial to the Commonwealth Bank marketing team. They choose to keep the 'Determined to be Different' tagline.

There has been enough debate and negative press about the ad itself, particularly the bizarre choice of a game show mocking the rise in interest rates. What is of most concern is their bold tagline and the complete lack of resonance at a branch level.

Go into any CBA branch and there is nothing 'different' about it. Nothing different than before the campaign and certainly nothing different from any of the other major banks.

This disconnect is possibly damaging the brand more than their choice to frivolously spend millions of dollars on a self-indulgent advertising campaign making a mockery of the thousands of Australians struggling with rising interest rates and a plummeting CBA share price.
 

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