Marketing tip: Know your audience
Over the weekend, I found two very similar articles in Marketing Week’s online magazine. Both articles were on marketing campaigns geared specifically toward women. Molson Coors is launching a new girl-friendly beer, Animée, in an attempt to exploit the “£396m untapped market of women beer drinkers” in the UK. The second piece criticized the use of pink in breast cancer awareness marketing. The backlash in both cases came from women themselves. Uncomfortable with gender-targeted marketing, these women offer us a valuable lesson – know your audience.
Molson Coors hopes to “make beer a real choice” for women. According to market research, female drinkers in the UK accounted for 17% of beer sales in 2010. Some 30,000 women were polled to find out why they weren’t drinking beer. The article does not tell the reader what the women’s responses were. It simply claims, “79% of women in the UK rarely or never drink beer.” In response to these findings, Molson Coors launched Animée, a 4% beer that comes in 3 flavours: clear filtered, zesty lemon and crisp rosé.
The problem with this type of campaign is that it insinuates that beer wasn’t a “real choice” beforehand. In the provided space beneath the article, many women made comments to this effect, saying that they’re not interested in light, calorie-reduced beer. Given the feedback, it will be interesting to see how successful this marketing campaign really is.
The Breast Cancer charity case
Breast cancer charities have been warned that using pink in their advertising campaigns is counterproductive. The article notes that pink “could reduce donation and support from women.” Why?
Apparently pink is a “gender cue” and tends to “activate a defensive reaction” in women. According to Dr. Stefano Puntoni, who conducted the research, “These defensive mechanisms interfere with key objectives of breast cancer campaigns” and “lower women’s perceived vulnerability to breast cancer, reduce their donations to ovarian cancer research, make breast cancer advertisements more difficult to process and decrease memory for breast cancer advertisements.”
Who knew a colour could have so much impact?
The head of branding and communication, Deanne Gardner, says, “The colour pink is now universally associated with breast cancer and breast cancer charities.” I tend to agree with her; it’s definitely too late to reconsider colour choise. But should it have been used in the first place?
When it comes to marketing, it’s always wise to carefully consider your audience before launching a new campaign. Are there people you’re forgetting? Is your marketing plan going to backfire as a result? We are fickle creatures – making gender-specific assumptions is never a good idea.
What are your thoughts?
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