How Women Are Changing The Way We Market

With women making 80% of consumer purchase decisions, you’d think that many of the people creating ads to reach consumers would be women. Not so. The creative side of the ad agency business is stuck in the Mad Men era — only 3% of creatives directors are women.

I recently reconnected with a yoga buddy from the late ‘90s, Terry Rieser. She and her business partner, Gina Delio, started Tag Creative 13 years ago. One of my previous companies that educated and trained women entrepreneurs was a client. Tag creates content: stories, images, and experiences that bring a brand to life. Many of its campaigns target women. We discussed the changes we’ve noticed.

Who’s doing the marketing
The advertising business has changed dramatically. “Years ago, when we attended meetings with clients, the room was filled with men,” said Delio. Marketing to women has improved as women have become executives at corporations. When a client asks us if a lipstick will resonate with women, we don’t have to hold focus groups, we can answer from firsthand experience, she continued.

How brands and agencies work together
The way agencies work with clients has changed as well. We’re moving from a command-and-control relationship to a collaborative one. In years past, marketing agencies invested in what they wanted to achieve, which was more about winning awards and less about meeting the goals of the client. Times change.

Delio and Rieser aren’t the only agency chiefs who have told me this. “Clients know their business better than we do,” said Lili Hall of Knock, Inc. whom I profiled in Forget the Glass Ceiling: Build Your Business Without One. “Why aren’t we working closer with them to understand their business?”

Feminine skills and competencies, such as empathy, flexibility, openness and collaboration are coming to the fore, not just as nice-to-haves but as business imperatives. John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio revealed this finding in their book, The Athena Doctrine: How Women (and the Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future, which was based on research conducted among 64,000 people surveyed in 13 nations. No surprise that relationships between brands and their agencies are becoming much more collaborative.

How brands and their agencies communicate
In a world that has become “always on,” there is a tendency to communicate about every minor thing and include everyone in an email distribution. Part of Tag’s formula is good communications. Communications can become over-communication. The last thing anyone wants is more unnecessarily emails to sort through. Tag has worked hard to streamline processes so that doesn’t happen. Only those who need to be part of a conversation are.

What is being communicated
When selling image to women, you need to connect at an emotional level, said Rieser. You have to understand the brand at its core and evoke emotion. It is a given that Tag’s work is high-quality and strategic. Tag has worked its communication magic for beauty, food, jewelry, and even real estate brands. Financial services, automotive and technology companies should be doing this, too, she continued. And, yes, Tag would like to help these companies do this.

Women have decision-making power over $11.2 trillion or 39% of all investable assets in the U.S., according to Harnessing the Power of the Purse: Female Investors and Global Opportunities for Growth, a report by the Center of Talent and Innovation. Women have also become the power users of some technologies, such as the internet, mobile, social media and eCommerce.