As the new year kicks off, marketers around the UK will be putting the finishing touches to their annual strategies. Many brand managers favour the STP (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) marketing model. First comes segmentation, whereby the market is sliced and diced into audience segments, ideally homogenous individually but heterogenous externally. Next, targeting defines which of these segments will be the focus for activity. Finally, positioning defines how to position the brand to each segment. There are innumerable choices and difficult decisions to be made throughout this process and much of the strategy comes from deciding not just what to do, but also what not to do. This process is important to ensure that potentially lucrative segments in terms of volume and value are not purposefully excluded from your activity through your targeting or accidentally excluded through your positioning. A recent pattern emerging from analysis is that many industries have gender bias in their marketing approach, resulting in them excluding women from their targeting and positioning. Not only is this morally dubious, it can also have a detrimental impact on profitability and growth.
Helen James, the CEO of CPB Europe and the co-founder of Creative Equals Business, a leadership programme and community for women in the creative industries, recently wrote a piece on the auto industry for Marketing Week, where she argued that beyond the gradual transition to electric vehicles, the industry’s biggest opportunity is in addressing male-dominant targeting and positioning. According to the DVLA, women comprise 48% of all motorists and input into the final purchase decision for 8 out of 10 cars sold. Despite this overwhelming influence on sales, over half of British women believe the automotive industry doesn’t understand them and a whopping 80% can’t name a single car brand that they feel does a good job of marketing to women.
To be clear, this is a failing of the industry as a whole, not only its marketing arm – further exemplified by the fact that women only currently account for 12% of the auto workforce, compared to 47% UK-wide. Even so, there is a clear growth opportunity for better targeting of and positioning to female segments, as well as designing creative that appeals to them and what they care about. This is even more prescient when looking at electric vehicles, with women currently only accounting for 1 in 10 EV owners. Auto Trader’s recent insight report into the UK EV market suggests a clear gender knowledge gap, driven in large part by a male-dominant media mix and comms strategy. With the 2035 ban of new petrol cars on the horizon, there is significant work to do in the coming years to redress this imbalance.
Another industry looking to redress this inherent gender imbalance is sport, and in particular football. The roaring success of the Lionesses over recent years has put a spotlight on gender equality in the beautiful game. It is in large part due to their performance on the pitch and the knock-on effect on viewing figures and commercial interest that the government has announced a £600M funding pot for improving women’s access to football. Live attendance at games and viewing figures for the WSL on Sky and UWCL on DAZN continue to break records, as the women’s game looks set to grow exponentially over the next decade. This will offer brands the opportunity to reach new, diverse audiences with real spending power.
Indeed, data suggests that the women’s football fan base has the potential to double over the next decade and additionally that these fans are also more likely to be in control of their household’s budgets. Furthermore, this audience not only signifies a growth opportunity but also offers potential for further media diversification (especially in emerging markets). A distinctive characteristic of women’s sports fans is their propensity to consume media differently compared to other fans. For instance, they exhibit a notably high index (at 1.7x) for online streaming consumption. An example of this in action is Sky recognising the opportunity this growing interest represents and launching the new WSL season with their ‘Keep Up’ campaign, which leverages WSL footballers and grime artists to specifically appeal to young female fans.
As women’s sport in general gains more coverage, brands can increasingly look to sponsorships and partnerships as female sports stars increasingly become household names. A word of warning, though. It is essential that brands looking to embrace women’s sport are doing so authentically and avoiding tokenism or they risk backlash from the public. To learn more, please see our previous article on avoiding tokensim here.
As all industries look to improve gender equality and reduce the gender pay gap, marketers too have an obligation to analyse their strategy and aim for equitable representation where appropriate. This is not a call to arms to ignore the data – but if the data is showing a gender gap, perhaps this lies not in a lack of interest on the female cohorts’ part, but rather in a historic lack of understanding of them on the industry’s part, which has manifested in them being largely ignored from targeting or positioning. When clients come to us with such concerns, we work collaboratively with them to get to the truth of the matter. Although bespoke to each client, this usually includes: an analysis of their current customer base to identify gender imbalance; a review of their historic and current marketing and advertising, including targeting, positioning, and creative and comms to see what might be driving the imbalance; and a collaborative roadmap on how to redress any imbalances unearthed, including potential media partners, platforms and formats to test, in-platform targeting and optimisation recommendations, and creative strategy. If you’re interested in learning more, please feel free to get in touch.
