Marketing to women and natives

How are women changing as consumers?

Parthibhan, women are changing as consumers just as men and children are. Change is in the air, and the years ahead will see women as active and more-than-active consumers than ever before.

There will be dramatic changes in consumer behaviour as articulated by women. Expect lots. Expect the woman to become more and more ‘I, me and myself”-centric than she is today. From today’s benign mother, wife, daughter and daughter-in-law overseeing everyone’s happiness, expect a shift more towards the “I”. This will have women looking to buy products and services that are aligned to their personal choices rather than aggregated family choices.

Expect women to demolish the paradigm thinking of many a marketer. Expect the woman to stop thinking the same old pinks and bright yellows in colour choices, whether it is clothes, automobiles, microwaves or fans. Expect women to exhibit consumer behaviour that is much more “non-womanly”. Expect radical shifts here.

Expect the woman to make many more decisions on her own. She will decide which mini-skirt to buy, and how short or long it must be. She will decide which car to buy, which insurance product to latch on to and which bank to operate her account in.

Expect 2020 to erase much of this gender divide as well.

Man today is seen to be the calculative one, and women are seen to be the impulsive ones. Marketers and advertisers don’t want to break this imagery, as it divides the sexes and their dominant appeals clearly. Any attempt to bring fuzziness here will result in confusion. Marketers and advertisers are in many ways postponing the inevitable, one ad at a time. The death of the differentiator between the genders is going to happen, later than sooner. But while it still exists, reap it to your advantage. And guess what, both genders love it. As of now.

I have come across this term “native advertising”. What’s it all about?

Nooka-ji, here is another jargon from the world of advertising and marketing. It refers to advertising that is native to the medium it appears in.

Native advertising really is surrogate advertising in the electronic medium, which is so popular today. In the physical world, a close analogy would be the advertorial. It’s really wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing advertising. It is soft advertising. It is intelligent advertising even. When you look for a pizza place on a search engine such as Google, and you find a whole host of cheese advertising along with it, that’s native advertising.

It is content- and algorithm-led. Analytics-led. User-analytics led.

It is really soft advertising as opposed to overt ones. It is customer-focused and dished out based on an understanding of the customer, rather than merely slap-dashing the advertising onto the face of hapless customers who are not the target segment at all.

Is advertising going to see a big jump in fortunes due to the upcoming elections? I work for one in Bangalore.

Ratna, yes, yes, yes. Advertisers are in a state of glee today. Due to no act of commission of theirs, there is still going to be more money in the advertising kitty this year. Expect a 7-8 per cent increase in overall advertising spends in the country, thanks to Election 2014. Expect the advertising pie for 2014 to touch ₹38,000-40,000 crore.

Ratna, if you work in advertising, expect better increments this year for sure. If it does not come your way, expect at least that long-postponed office refurbishment work to happen.

(Harish Bijoor is a brand expert & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. Send your questions to cat.a.lyst@thehindu.co.in)

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