[Man anad woman*]
Given the poor quality
of most TV programs and amount of time allocated to advertisements, I often
find the most interesting aspect of watching television is analyzing the
commercials. Lately, I notice three spots, each for a different product,
marketing products to men despite the fact that the traditional purchasers are
women. They are food for thought for entrepreneurs as they demonstrate the art of
specific messages and the possibility of market expansion beyond traditional
customers, concepts that have become even more important during the last year.
The products being
marketing for men were urine leakage underwear, perfume and skin cream. For the
first, Tena reiterated the phrase “one in four” many times and showed image of average,
healthy looking men, emphasizing that one of them had incontinence problems
without actually showing the underwear. To sell the perfume, Johnny Depp
appears in the Dior “Sauvage” commercial, escaping the city to reach the wild
desert. Finally, Loréal adveritises its Hydra Energetic Skin lotion
by showing young men stating that the use of the cream removes the fatigue from
their skin, making look more energetic. It is clear that the target audience
for these spots is male.
Accordingly, the
commercials adopt approaches that are different from those directed at women. In the first case,
the message was that it is no shame to have to wear this product because many
others suffer from the same problem even if they do not talk about it. By contrast,
Tena’s adverts for its women’s products emphasize the effectiveness and
attractiveness of the garment, even showing it. Clearly, the issue of shame is much
less relevant for women. While men have traditionally bought perfume, they
have mainly purchased it as gifts for women except maybe aftershave for themselves.
Since perfume commercials essentially communicate the impression that a person
will make after sprinkling some of the fragrance, the men’s version emphasizes
virility and youth, not external physical beauty. In the past, men’s use of
skin cream was therapeutic, i.e., to treat dry skin. Loréal is attempting to
instill in men’s mind that their skin somehow reflects their inner fatigue, not
an attractive feature, and a solution for this “problem” exists, i.e., this cream.
By contrast, women have always used make-up and thus only need "reminding" that
their skin is showing its age, a permanent problem, not that it looks tired, a
temporary problem. Therefore, the male-directed spots apply very specific
strategies.
These strategies
include identifying, expanding and creating a need. Tena did not invent male
incontinence problems but did realize that most men were not using a dedicated
product to handle the problem. While men did buy some scents for themselves,
recent generations of men are more open to using them, thus allowing
significant expansion in the number of potential customers. Traditionally the vast majority of men
have not expressed much aestjetic worry about their skin or the external aspects
of aging aside from balding, limiting the ability of the cosmetics companies to persuade them that
they need skin care products. However, the emphasis on short-term
attractiveness may open the door for greater purchases of existing products.
All these strategies allow companies to sell more by merely adapting an existing
product.
For entrepreneurs and
freelances, these “mega” lessons also apply. It can be productive to invest
time in considering the profile of a potential buyer of your product while
ignoring historical patterns. Where a pattern of limited purchases exists, it
may be possible to expand the volume of orders by suggesting further uses of
your services by emphasizing their benefits to the customer. Given the
increased number of people working independently from their home, the
potential market for many services has increased exponentially, thus rendering
it vital to consider to how to reach these customers. The principles of
marketing do not change according to budget, only the means of reaching the customers.
The next time you get
up during the break to get something to eat that would be better to pass on,
try to pay attention to the commercials and treat them as free marketing
seminars. That often makes them far more interesting than the programs themselves.
* Picture captions can help millions of vision impaired people access the Internet.
Picture: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/cdd20-1193381/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=4065900">愚木混株 Cdd20</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=4065900">Pixabay</a>
No comments:
Post a Comment