BlogHer - Stephanie Fierman On Beer And Blahniks (or, Why Do Businesses Not Understand Women?) - Comments

Beer Lover

Liz Rizzo — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:37:23 -0500

“create a world where women love beer as much as they love shoes.”

Um... I love beer WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY more than I love shoes.

Which is why I don't drink swill like Coors. Seriously, someone came to my house for a poker night with Coors, and it's been in my fridge for a year and half through two major parties.

You know, I don't think I'm their target market.

AND AND AND

WATERED DOWN GUINNESS??? For my sanity, I'm going to pretend that I never ever ever ever read those words.

They hurt me.

Liz Rizzo

I blog at Everyday Goddess.

"Newsflash: Women are not tiny men"

Lisa Stone — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:34:10 -0500

BRAVO!

Wonderful piece. No watered-down Guinness for moi.

Now I'm dying to know: Who do you think has done a good job? Sometimes a gendered approach works for me, other times it doesn't. Case in point: One of the companies that I think has done a terrific job reaching out to its customers is Harley-Davidson (http://www.harley-davidson.com/wcm/Content/Pages/home.jsp?locale=en_US). On the other hand, my love for Dove's Real Beauty campaign (http://www.dove.us/#/cfrb/) probably goes without saying. While H-D isn't gendered at all, Dove's all about women.

(Full-disclosure: I don't own a Harley, but I'm sure I've got Unilever products all over my house.)

Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette

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Stephanie Fierman On Beer And Blahniks (or, Why Do Businesses Not Understand Women?)

stephanie fierman — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 18:09:18 -0500

I don’t really understand it. One way or the other, I often write about women who are smart, accomplished and savvy. I don’t consider this to be any big deal: some women are all these things and some aren’t. Just like men. So why do companies still talk down to women in weird ways that they use with men?

There’s an article in Friday’s Wall Street Journal highlighting the efforts of UK beer makers to attract women. To me, this is a fairly basic marketing exercise: Determine the needs of your target. Build product, messaging and pricing to suit. Sell into channel. The (grossly generalized) End. But too often, it doesn’t seen to work that way.

Coors UK says that its mission is to “create a world where women love beer as much as they love shoes.” That should make a marketer cringe. How does Coors know that all women love shoes (they don’t)? And even if they did, what is it about the buying criteria women apply to a fashion purchase (that can be expensive and is seen by the world day in and day out on her feet) that beer makers think they can really learn from here? And do you only want (’airhead’ is the subtle implication) women who can’t live without… heels? How about wanting to create a world where women love beer as much as they love exchange-traded funds? Or as much as they love criminal law? Climbing teelphone polls? Hmmm. Not sexy.

Later in the article, a bartender in London says that few women have tried Guinness Red (a line extension intended to appeal to the gals) because of its low awareness, and that it would help if “advertising could help explain that it’s (Red) like a watered-down Guinness.”

No no, please don’t go to the bother of making a product for little ol’ me - just give me a man’s product weakened and drained of whatever made it special in the first place. And ask your salesman to describe it to me that way. I’ll be fine.

Peroni seems to be on to something, given that 30% of its drinkers are women - over 2x the industry average. The beer’s upcoming campaign ties the product to Italian culture, a near-universally appealing concept of leisure and enjoyment.

News flash: women are not tiny men. We do however have and spend tons of money. What if we stopped thinking of making our power tools pink in order to sell them to the babes?
PeroniGuinness beerCoors