@marketingmag
manufacturers no longer offer
just vehicle purchases, but also
rideshare concepts.
In addition to making wrong
assumptions about how we use
vehicles, more importantly, we
are making them about how we
market to different genders. Many
still believe the true car buyer is
male. Plenty are also arrogant
enough to think that a woman
can’t buy a car without a man’s
infl uence, despite proof that women
do the bulk of purchase decision-
making. It is pretty evident from
various global studies that the
range is heavily weighted to the
female buyer. Today, women
infl uence a majority of all car
purchases and account for the
majority of all consumer purchases,
and yet automotive advertisers
are leaving female buyers
misunderstood.
In a nutshell: we are not
marketing to the real audience, we
are doing brand damage along the
way and we are missing the strategic
opportunity. Worse still, brand and
agency ignorance is perpetuating
bias and impacting a future society
in the process by creating work that
impressionable communities see
every day.
It’s likely that the automotive
industry is still male dominated in
marketing and sales and certainly
in its creative teams; and this
perpetuates the failures in the
creative we produce.energy blood-pumping music,
sporty and racing car imagery;
yet the female buyer, who is
actually making most of the
decisions, is forgotten. Women feel
misunderstood and dissatisfied,
yet still buy the products. Perhaps
it is that many women are so used
to advertising that doesn’t consider
them that they just ignore it,
alternatively in some cases women
may only be perpetuating their own
discrimination.Diversity oversteer
The current dominance of women’s
shopping power may be due to
gender bias from the past, in what
I call ‘diversity oversteer’. This
is likely an impact of women’s
perceived control of decisions in
the home (in the past seen as a
female job of diminished value). As a
consequence, women now embrace
and dominate some of the bigger
decisions. Activists are fighting hard
for female rights (which I agree
needs to happen), but sometimesAccording to The Communications
Council, the average employee
in an ad agency is a 27-year-old
male. Many more males in senior
leadership roles dominating
agencies could be the cause of
an overriding flaw in the creative
process. Most marketers would
have no clue as to who is actually
working on their campaigns and may
be blindly accepting the work that
churns out of agencies, unwittingly
enabling the problem
to persist.
As a strategist who loves
consumer insights and data, I’ve
seen this trend in other categories,
where men misunderstand the
market and include their own
perception of themselves. Anyone
living in a privileged position
sometimes can’t see what’s
happening around them.
We have this incredible
incongruence out there, with
masculine cues like aggressive
themes, competitiveness, darker
colours, bold graphics and highIn a nutshell: we are not
marketing to the real audience,
we are doing brand damage along
the way and we are missing the
strategic opportunity.
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