A great marketing to women campaign that is #awesome, #inspiring, and #brilliant is the #mygirls campaign for Adidas. This global campaign aimed at girls 14-23, with a concentration on 17 year olds, uses social media as the anchor to engage and rally girls all over the world with their passion for sports. Nike was always the vanguard for marketing to women since the 1980’s but, Adidas is about to give Nike a run for its money. Using the hashtag #mygirls, this campaign engages its audience on Twitter and Instagram. The microsite is a hub for girls to follow other girls around the world like Jordanian boxers or Brazilian divers. A visual feast of connectivity, it shares its fans pictures and tweets. It inspires, gives advice and contest opportunities, and connects its audience to trend-setting gear and wear.  A guerilla aspect of the campaign is putting pop up gyms in various cities to invite girls to explore and try their hand at different sports like fencing and cricket. This campaign is a homerun for all girls with a passion for sports, whether they sport Adidas or not. And the goodwill Adidas will get from going beyond the sell to engagement should get them more fans and sales all over the world. My new current favorite marketing to women campaign is #mygirls.  Do you think this creative connects to girls?

Want to see more, check out my first post in my series 20 examples of marketing to women that connects.

In October, our creative director Laurie Hix mourned the passing of Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign. For seven years, Dove had celebrated women with body fat, freckles, wrinkles, gray hairs, and other “flaws.” In the first two months of the campaign, Dove’s U.S sales increased by 600 percent, illustrating the immense power of brands that know how to market to women.

After that, the company launched a self-esteem saver and continued to redefine beauty. It made many women, including me, very, very happy.

When Dove shifted gears and started producing spots with sassy, skinny women soaping up in the shower, Laurie wrote, “It seemed like all the progress they made just evaporated.”

Well, it seems Dove got the message. If the company was seeking redemption with its new video, it has succeeded in spades. The film instantly went viral, with almost 3.5 million views as I write this. A 6.5-minute version has gotten almost half a million views. And while I’m at it, Dove’s Facebook page has more than 13.7 million likes, which blows competition like Olay’s 1.6 million likes away.

The video portrays women who’ve been partnered with a stranger for reasons unknown to them. After spending some time together, each subject goes into a sunny loft and describes herself to a forensic artist. The artist is separated from the subjects by a screen and draws their images based on the subjects’ descriptions only. Next, the partner describes this same woman to the artist. Then the subjects come and view their two sketches side-by-side. Invariably, the self-described portrait looks heavy, unattractive, and downright melancholy compared with the prettier pictures made with input from the strangers.

As the women view their sad self-images, their faces fall. One of them even cries. I must admit, when I watched it, I teared up, too.

The message at the film’s end, accompanied by quiet piano music, is, You are more beautiful than you think.

I’m excited by Dove’s return to its Real Beauty roots for a couple reasons:

1. Money Talks
   Such a quick reversal might indicate that Dove’s sales fell when they started using conventionally beautiful models instead of women who were both beautiful and (take your pick) short, flat-chested, overweight, or older.  This shows that a cultural shift has indeed happened. In addition, a powerful branding phenomenon has happened. Dove spent years carefully and even lovingly building a brand around this idea of real beauty. They sent positive messages in both their advertising and their products like the lotion they named Pro-Age instead of Anti-Wrinkle.

   That’s why women felt so connected to the Dove brand—and why they may have stopped buying when the Real Beauty ended.

2. The Expansion of Advertising
   These videos (you can choose between a 1.5 minute version, a 3-minute one, and a 6.5-minute one) are not commercials. They are films, with a narrative arc, beautiful art direction, and a real emotional impact. (Have any of your Facebook friends shared the video with the comment, “This made me cry?” Several of mine have.)

   Dove isn’t pushing product here. They don’t even mention a product, or the Dove name, other than a brief flash of the logo at the end. Yet the impact on the brand is massive.

This shows me just how powerful it can be to think both outside the box and in long-range terms when you’re molding a brand. If we’re brave, genuine, and give our target audience—women—what they really want, we can achieve big, big things.

When Dove does a more conventional soap sell, as Laurie pointed out, it looks just like its competitors. It’s when the product takes a step back—and lets the beauty of real women shine—that the brand really stands out.

I hope the instant success of this video encourages Dove to stick to its guns—to connect to women in a unique, respectful, and beautifully real way. In short, to make an emotional connection.

In my last blog I made mention of the “clueless husband” trope in TV ads.  Upon closer examination I’ve noticed this cliché has become nearly an epidemic in television advertising to women.  Men—or more specifically, husbands—use the blender with no lid, change their kid’s poopy diaper on the kitchen table, and generally behave like morons, while their long-suffering wives clean up after them with disinfectant wipes and paper towels.  Check out the hilarious Sarah Haskins’ diatribe on “Doofy Husbands” for more examples.  She astutely points out that while single men in TV commercials are still cool—driving hot cars, buying beer for sexy women in bars, working out at the gym—as soon as they get married, it’s all over.

While this portrayal of men can be funny (especially if you’re not a man), it demonstrates a lack of respect for women as well as men.  It gives the impression that the only way to make women feel smart and competent is to make men dense and inept.  This “if I make you less then I’m more” fallacy is the logic used by bullies everywhere.  Most women I know don’t feel the need to bully men in order to feel that they are intelligent or capable.  And research shows that the most effective marketing to women also appeals to men.  Why do so many advertisers ignore this truth?

It’s not like men don’t notice.  In fact, men are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore.  As described in this Huffington Post article  men protested a 2012 TV campaign by Huggies in which the diaper company implied that allowing dads to be in charge of babies for an extended time would “put diapers to the test.”  In other words, dads would let the babies’ diapers go without changing for a lot longer than moms.  One man protesting the spots complained: “Get over the gender thing, will ya, Huggies? Because, as best as I can tell from all the comments you're ignoring on Facebook, most of us parents have been over the gender thing for years.”

Sounds like good advice for advertisers everywhere.  What do you think?  Is the portrayal of men in ads targeted at women unfair?  Or is it justifiable payback for decades of vapid women on TV?    

There will always be those woman-only products that you can market without giving men a second thought:  maxi-pads, push-up bras, remedies for PMS, etc.  Similarly, some products can be marketed to men and men alone—aftershave, athletic supporters, and so forth. But as men’s and women’s roles become less rigidly defined, there are fewer and fewer such products.  This presents both new opportunities and new headaches for advertisers.

Case in point:  Miller beer.  Their Miller64, the lightest of the light beers, is considered by many men to be a “chick beer” (not to be confused with Chick Beer, an actual brand of beer marketed directly to women).  To give an idea of what Miller is up against in marketing Miller64, one YouTube commenter, having seen a 2009 TV spot for the beer, scoffed,  “Real beer for real men, none of that watery nonsense.”  Yet Miller apparently believes there is a male market for this beer, men who care about watching their weight.

So what to do? Scantily clad babes and he-man hunting trips will only turn off women consumers.  But many men are loath to even admit they count calories, let alone drink a “girl” beer.  Miller’s answer: hide the low-cal, light lifestyle message in a manly drinking song that sounds like something drunken pirates would bellow on the open seas.   The lyrics are modern enough:

We run a mile before breakfast
Sure, I had a salad for lunch
But a Miller 64 at dinner
Oh yes 'cause I've worked on my paunch

But the melody and the voices are pure testosterone.

The folks at Yoplait answered their man/woman marketing dilemma in a different way: they simply made two different commercials.   Today’s new dad doesn’t just mow the lawn and work on the family car.  He’s a kinder, gentler dad, who shops for groceries and even packs the kids’ lunches.  Which is why Yoplait needs not just one but two different spots for their Gogurt squeezable yogurt tubes.  One spot claims that “Moms who get it, get Gogurt,” and the other, “Dads who get it, get Gogurt.” 

Note, however, that despite their enlightened approach, Yoplait can’t quite resist falling back on the tried and true “clueless dad” trope; unlike the perfectionist, über-efficient Mom, Dad requires a full pad of sticky notes to remind him to pack Gogurt into the kids’ lunches, including one from his wife (who still knows best, after all). 

Clearly, when it comes to marketing one product to both men and women, advertisers are still feeling their way.   Is it possible to effectively market to women and men with one spot? Or do you think Yoplait has the right idea?