How She Roles
home – washing dishes, mopping floors and beaming at
“Housekeeper” was identified as one of the ways marketers most address women. Not one respondant chose housekeeper as one of her top ten most important roles.
a fresh clean toilet. Not one of our respondents identified herself as “housekeeper” as one of their prioritized identities. In fact, our study revealed that women often avoid some roles associated with these and other stereotypes. If they’re avoiding the role in real life, it’s to be expected that they’re avoiding the message in marketing. Marketers who repeatedly ignore the multi-dimensional
aspects of a woman’s life are making a costly mistake by focusing on one role in the extreme. Take, for example, ads that show a mother happily cleaning her house brightly, smiling, wearing clean khaki pants, a nice sweater with sleek and shiny hair. This portrayal is unrealistic and women tell us they ignore it. Even though more than one-quarter of survey respondents said they could relate to the role of housekeeper, not one respondent identified housekeeper as one of her top ten most important roles. Meanwhile, one in twenty-five identified housekeeper as the number one way marketers address them. It seems that even though women clean their homes, they do not see themselves as “housekeepers” and women don’t believe messaging that depicts a happy “housekeeper” is aimed at them.
Another mistake: Stereotyping women as “shoppers.” Less than 5% of surveyed women identified shopper among their top five identities. Two major chains that cater to women, TJ Maxx and Marshalls, are currently running ads portraying women as hopeless, frenzied shoppers. One TJ Maxx commercial features a “shopping addict” – a woman proclaiming she shops at TJ Maxx weekly to “always have a new look.” Essentially, this approach places women who shop frequently into the “shopping addicts anonymous” club. Most women do shop more frequently than men, but they are also shopping for their families.
Missteps and Corrected Steps: Yoplait Intuitively, marketers target women in the weight loss and diet category with a promise of “losing pounds” as the product benefit. However, almost twice as many women prefer to think of themselves as “foodies” rather than “dieters.” Ergo, low-fat food and weight loss companies have an opportunity to reposition their promise to appeal to a women’s healthy love of food instead of loss of pounds. Our respondents made clear that demonstrated satisfaction is more
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