Marketer's Forum: Marketing across the gender gap

Rudi Ramin
Regional marketing manager, biscuits, APAC
Mondelez

I believe Asian marketers can be prepared for any shift in consumer habits as long as we make the effort to know our consumers intimately. If we’re developing new products, we have to identify who our core consumers are and ensure we satisfy their needs. 

For existing products, we should find out whether our brand’s appeal could cut across both genders and decide if our product and communication would be gender-neutral. We then make a careful choice on our strategic value consumers in order to talk to them with the right messages.

I believe that there is a huge difference in the most effective way to talk to women versus men and making the right choices should spell success for your brand.

William Lai
Business director
Microsoft Advertising

Smart marketers should not overlook either gender. They should recognise the opportunity to use smarter targeting to expand their reach.

Brands in the CPG category are using targeted messages to men very well. They understand a man may not want to use the same facewash or deodorant as his wife. Instead of rolling-out a typical TVC for anti-dandruff shampoos with a stale actor in a black T-shirt, Axe is telling men to ‘lose the flakes, get the girl’. 

With the rise of digital, marketing is increasingly targeted. By looking at gender-specific consumption patterns, from preferred types of media, devices, platforms, and even the time they consume media, marketers can deliver relevant messages tailored to men or women.

Peter Dingle
Interactive marketing manager, APAC
Intel

From an industry perspective, the biggest change is that we focus on a younger audience now. You’ll find many companies are interested in talking to the younger, tech-literate consumer, where it doesn’t matter if you’re a guy or girl, what matters are the channels you choose.

As a technology brand, our fanbase on Facebook has been predominantly male. But lately we’ve seen an increasing number of female fans across the region, thanks to a strategy of appealing to everyone on Facebook.

What works is to have a good balance of content: A certain amount of tech, new products, gadgets or devices, cool geeky quirky things that appeal to geeks of both sexes; and broad content such as entertainment and music.

Richard Leong
Marketing director
Pizza Hut Hong Kong

Many products cater for both genders, especially if targeted at the younger, more upwardly mobile segments such as fashion, skincare and lifestyle. With rising disposable income, increasing gender equality and emerging crossover trends, marketers are more conscious of product development that caters for both, showing similar lifestyles and attitudes.

However, gender advertising is still prevalent. Many brands such as casinos, cars and fashion, have heritage (or baggage) and will only depict stereotypical gender roles and associations. With respective brand positioning, some brands will always have a more masculine or feminine personality, while others will emphasise a common, single-minded theme.

Gender-specific marketing will continue to be an important way to segment audiences and effectively reach target consumer groups, because men and women have inherently different preferences in their professional and personal lives.

In marketing efforts for Hendrick’s Gin, William Grant & Sons has successfully employed this strategy, especially in initial campaigns where Hendrick’s was used in the classic, quintessentially-male gin and tonic. In recent years, however, marketing efforts have become increasingly gender neutral — the cucumber and rose-infused spirit is now used in a variety of unique cocktails that appeal to certain personality traits and lifestyles, as opposed to a specific gender.