The Use of Gender-Based Marketing

Hi! I hope you are well and keeping safe during this time. This week I wanted to have a little look at gender-based marketing. Yes, I know this is a big topic and there is a lot that could be discussed. And by no means am I an expert about this topic, but I did come across a TED Talks by Gaby Barrios titled 'Why gender-based marketing is bad for business' and she brought up some interesting points.

Barrios started her talk using a personal experience. About the time she and her friends were sitting to watch the Women's World Cup. Feeling slightly targeted by ads for makeup, cleaning products and dieting, they noticed that the ads they were watching between the game were directed toward a female audience.

Having understood that there is nothing wrong with that, most of the preliminary segmenting of a product begins with segmenting demographics by genders. So it would make sense to air ads for a female audience while the Women's World Cup was on air.

Barrios explains that using gender to segment for certain products and brands creates separation and perpetuates stereotypes, which can take you away from the fun things that could drive better success. Barrios describes this type of gender-based activity to be a shortcut in marketing. She goes on to explain that through her projects they found that gender was rarely the most predictive thing to understand consumer needs.

So why are we limiting ourselves by taking this shortcut to marketing. Yes, segmenting by demographics like gender can be helpful to build a basic understanding of the market and who would be buying into it. But there is so much more to explore, not to mention some of the gender-based marketing activities are condescending in nature.

Barrios explains that using gender to differentiate a market is distracting from the underlying problem. She uses an example of financial institutes. Building stereotypes like "women don't like to invest" and "men are aggressive risk taker" takes focus away from the main problem which is that there are some who are more equipped to handle their money and those who aren't. I thought this example was interesting, it may not be a complete depiction of the current status of the marketing world but I think it brings up some interesting points.

There are many different variables we can use as marketers to address and grow our market and we know that the growth part is very difficult. Of course in some cases segmenting by gender is effective, but in other cases why should we limit ourselves when there are so many more variables to explore.

What are your thoughts on gender-based marketing? Are there any examples of great or poor gender based marketing you know of?

Thank you for reading :)

Stay safe!