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Insider Insights: The Female Ad Buy
Kim Martin, Executive Vice President and General Manager, WE tv
As we enter this cable and broadcast upfront season, women have more purchasing power and decision-making authority than ever before. In the United States, females control $14 trillion of wealth and spend about $5 trillion each year. As chief purchasing agents, women also make more then 80 percent of household buying decisions.
Two years ago, the first Marketing-to-Women (M2W) Conference took place in Chicago. It was a sell-out success and a sign of the times.
With The Third Annual M2W Conference just around the corner, there’s no question about it. The tides are shifting. Women’s influence on household spending is changing, and advertisers are noticing.
As we enter this cable and broadcast upfront season, women have more purchasing power and decision-making authority than ever before. In the United States, females control $14 trillion of wealth and spend about $5 trillion each year. As chief purchasing agents, women also make more then 80 percent of household buying decisions.
And we’re not just talking clothes and cosmetics. Typical male industries and business segments are refocusing their target demographic to connect with women through advertising and promotional efforts.
Why women, and why now? Rising incomes and changing roles have leveled the playing field. Today, women are responsible for 85 percent of all consumer purchases, including 91 percent of new homes and 65 percent of new cars. In addition, females are the primary purchasers of consumer-electronics equipment, including computers and PDAs, and represent the majority of Web users. Accounting for half of all stock ownership, women are also responsible for 70 percent of new businesses, and female-owned companies employ more people in the United States than all of the Fortune 500 companies combined, according to data reported in a May 2006 article by interactive media strategist and ClickZ expert Tessa Wegert.
In short, “shes” are the new “he” when it comes to influence and interests.
No wonder traditionally male-focused companies, especially home-, financial- and lending-related businesses, are shifting their marketing dollars and strategies to target women. According to Nielsen Adviews data, product categories that spent more, in some cases nearly 4,000 to 6,000 percent more, on America’s six female cable networks in the fourth quarter of 2006 as compared to the same quarter in 2005 included tax services, insurance Web sites, bank services, autos, and credit card and wireless telephone services.
In tune with the times, The Home Depot and Harley-Davidson began pursuing women two years ago with classes on the how-tos of home repairs and Web pages targeting female bikers. Meanwhile, banks and financial service companies, including Citibank, Merrill Lynch and Charles Schwab, have created entire departments that market investment products exclusively to women, while electronics giant Best Buy has been retraining its sales staff to communicate better with female customers.
Mindful of their new audience, these companies and a host of others are necessarily adjusting their approaches, and in some cases, their products, to appeal to women. Females’ flourishing Internet usage, coupled with our desire to read and research before buying, is resulting in more targeted messaging and less traditional marketing strategies, including Web sites, mobile technologies, product placements, sponsorships and good old editorial content. Cable networks are also seeing greater play.
According to the March 5, 2007 CableWorld article “What Do Cable Advertisers Want? Women,” most networks report increases in female-targeted ads for traditional male product categories such as financial services and consumer electronics. As recently as last fall, the Hallmark Channel began noticing more ads in the insurance, financial service and tech categories targeting women, the publication reported.
In the last six months alone, WE tv has attracted a host of financial institutions and lending houses to advertise on the network, including Liberty Mutual, Chase and E-loan. Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard, which had never bought on WE before, is now one of the primary sponsors, along with Liberty Mutual, of the network’s original series, She’s Moving In.
Once a minority market, today, women are the primary targets of a new multibillion-dollar advertising push. As media-industry professionals, we wield incredible sway over this nationwide “buy,” influencing who connects with women and how. It is important that we acknowledge this fact, and put it to good use. To better understand and influence the trend, for example, WE tv is attending and sponsoring this year’s M2W Conference.
Carving out and capitalizing on opportunities presented by this marketing shift is, no doubt, already on our agendas, and PDAs, as the upfront season takes hold. But going forward, it behooves us to continue to find new, customized and innovative ways to partner with advertisers to reach women, because the power of the female purse is expected to soar.
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