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Greetings from
Ray Kotcher
Global Roundtable:
How to Build Brand Magnetism and Believers
Global Roundtable:
Building Brand Believers Among Women 25 to 54
Brand Believers for the Hostess Twinkie
Street Smarts
What’s Hot at Ketchum
• Ketchum senior partner and CEO Ray Kotcher maintains that a critical challenge for public relations and the entire marketing communications community centers on mastering how to build brand believers who stay loyal.
• Douglas Atkin, author of The Culting of Brands, and three other brand-marketing experts look at how best to communicate a brand’s magnetism to consumers and how to avoid damaging a brand icon.
• Listen to a podcast in which Douglas Atkin chats about how to build brand believers.
• Kodak’s director of worldwide advertising and other experts on marketing to women explore how to build brand warriors among women ages 25 to 54.
• A group of young Ketchum professionals, the creative ImagiNation, dishes up an array of ways to bolster the Hostess Twinkie brand.
• Heard of Twinsumer, offline marketing and teen shadowing? They’re among cutting-edge brand-marketing trends in Street Smarts.
• eKetchum Director Adam Brown takes you into the world of blogs and podcasts as he welcomes you to Ketchum Personalized Media.
Global Roundtable
Building Brand Believers Among Women 25 to 54
Panelists:
Nancy Carr

Nancy Carr, Kodak vice president and worldwide director of advertising. 		Martha Barletta

Martha Barletta, author of Marketing to Women and authority on gender-focused marketing strategies. 		Kelley Skoloda

Kelley Skoloda, director of Ketchum’s Global Brand Marketing Practice and architect of the agency’s Women 25to54 communications offering. 		Paul Rand

Paul Rand, Ketchum partner and another key creator of the Women 25to54 offering.

How do you build brand believers among a specific demographic group? That’s what our panelists explore in this roundtable discussion that looks at women ages 25 to 54. It’s a potent and robust demographic that comprises 53 million women in the U.S. alone. And they control the bulk of the $3.3 trillion in consumer spending that women in the U.S. influence today.

Yet, it is increasingly difficult for marketers to connect with this group. They have much more on their minds today than just five years ago as more things compete for their attention, leaving little time for commercial messages. Indeed, these women are what Ketchum describes as 'multi-minding,' constantly juggling both physically and mentally those multiple facets of their complex lives. The previous term that described these women – multitasking – is passé, it just doesn’t capture the myriad dimensions of their lives.

So how can your brand really touch and magnetize them? OK, panel, it’s all yours.

» Women ages 25 to 54 encompass 53 million women in the U.S. alone. How do you corral such a large and diverse group to make them brand believers?
» It’s so diverse, with millions of unmarried or just-married women and millions of women becoming grandmothers. Using public relations, how do you entice them on behalf of a client?
» How did this group come to wield such marketplace power?
» If you were a particular brand that wanted to enlist this demographic, how would you make this group stand up and listen?
» Is this age group more apt to stick with the brands their mothers used? In other words, is brand loyalty strong within this demographic group?
» Ketchum has coined the word “multi-minding” to describe what these women do today to grapple with everything on their plate. Is it really that different from the past?
» Why are marketers having more difficulty connecting with this group today?
» Do you see traditional advertising ever able to connect effectively with this massive demographic group?
» How do you see this demographic group changing over the next five years?

Women ages 25 to 54 encompass 53 million women in the U.S. alone. How do you corral such a large and diverse group to make them brand believers?
Nancy Carr: You can't. Pick one segment – businesswomen, soccer moms, new moms, older active females – and stay intensely focused until they become evangelists. Then move out to broader markets.
Martha Barletta: Most brands look only at how their message resonates with the category's buying dynamics. The bigger opportunity is to look at how the brand resonates with female gender culture — women's priorities, preferences and decision processes. While, certainly, variances exist related to age, lifestage, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, etc., women in this 'family-oriented' age group have much in common in terms of what's important to them.
Kelley Skoloda: Connecting with these women is especially challenging because the typical woman in this group mentally juggles a mix of career, family and self-care decisions at any one moment – what we call 'multi-minding.' You have to deliver credible messaging that quickly and completely connects to this critical consumer audience.
Paul Rand: We must find ways of determining the right formula and delivering it in the right ways and surrounding this group with it so that they’re hearing it in bite-sized formats.
It’s so diverse, with millions of unmarried or just-married women and millions of women becoming grandmothers. Using public relations, how do you entice them on behalf of a client?
Carr: Leverage brands that already have a great track record and loyal customer base, again staying focused on the one segment within the entire group. If it's new moms, perhaps it’s a Leapfrog or a Fisher-Price. If it's older active females, perhaps it's travel, leisure, hotels or spas.
Rand: Public relations is a component but not the be-all, end-all. And PR today has an expanded definition that encompasses many elements, from entertainment marketing to managing relationships with those elite who influence a brand. What’s important is that the right messages surround the person and break through all the clutter. Once this initial interest is piqued, our job is to catch their attention, intrigue them, and provide the information to them.
How did this group come to wield such marketplace power?
Carr: They always had the market power; it’s just that advertising and PR never focused on them as a group.
Barletta: Women's income in the U.S. has soared 63% in the past 20 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while men's has stayed stable at .6%. In addition, women have more financial independence: today, single women head 27% of households. So she is the primary breadwinner in more than one of four households. Thirty percent of working wives out-earn their husbands. Most importantly, women have always functioned as household 'Chief Purchasing Officer.' Fifty years ago, most households didn't make that many big-ticket purchases. Beyond homes and cars, there weren't many. No mutual funds, computers, consumer electronics, big health care, big family vacations, etc. So, originally, women's buying authority included just household items and services. Now that's all changed. Women are the majority buyers in almost every consumer category — except maybe beer!
Skoloda: The numbers are staggering. Women 25 to 54 in the U.S. control 80% of the household buying, more than 50% of the wealth, and make 62% of all car purchases. This market has grown and changed dramatically because more women have entered the workforce and their earnings have climbed.
Rand: All those factors cited explain why women 25 to 54 wield more power. The surprising thing is how very few companies, at least on the business-to-consumer side, realize the measurable, increased benefits they could achieve from gaining a better understanding of how products appeal to women and how they can be marketing to them. Car companies only in recent times understand the role women play in influencing the family’s car purchase. General Motor’s Saturn brand was founded on some of the principles it learned about what attracts and keeps women customers: Not talking to them in a condescending way, providing information in a straightforward language, not making them feel stupid, and dealing with them straight – from sales to service.
If you were a particular brand that wanted to enlist this demographic, how would you make this group stand up and listen?
Carr: Engage them in a conversation about their lifestyle and what's most important to them in making them more connected, organized, balanced, etc.
Skoloda: Our primary research indicates many things compete for these women’s attention. About 75% said they spend more time thinking about others’ needs than their own, and 62% say they have little time for commercial messages. So, making them stand up and listen requires a high level of credibility, bite-sized and repeatable messages, 360-degree touch points and consistent communications.
Rand: We recently held a session on marketing technology to women, and we found that the companies that really have paid attention to female consumers and are doing it well have been rewarded abundantly for their efforts. Kodak, for instance, truly understands that demographic and is committed to it, and Best Buy with its Geek Squad of computer and technology repairers is another example.
Is this age group more apt to stick with the brands their mothers used? In other words, is brand loyalty strong within this demographic group?
Carr: Let me speak from personal experience. Recently, Breck Shampoo, my mother's brand, relaunched. Out of loyalty to mom, I bought a bottle and tried it. It did nothing for me. Today's world is radically changed from 25 to 30 years ago. Aging brands need to reinvent themselves for the new lifestyles, yet bring along the key brand equities like trust, quality and ease – like Kodak does!
Skoloda: Our research and experience show that credibility, messages that quickly connect, surrounding the consumer with messages and consistently confirming purchasing decisions are keys to brand loyalty and effectively reaching women ages 25 to 54. Mothers certainly influence what brands women choose, as do the media, experts, friends and popular culture.
Rand: Brand loyalty – it’s really strong for what it represents. When women get engaged in purchasing a certain brand and build a relationship with the brand, it’s not oftentimes done just by default but on a conscious level. For larger-scale purchases, women gather their initial bits of information and then, more than men, look up far more information. Savvy marketers have messages to help them break through the clutter; they have the depth and approach of information to hold women's interest and to push them into purchase decisions.
Ketchum has coined the word 'multi-minding' to describe what these women do today to grapple with everything on their plate. Is it really that different from the past?
Carr: No. If you go back into the history of the American woman, she always has had to multi-mind and grapple (having babies, tending the farm, feeding the families, managing the money). It's just recently that the advertising and PR world has decided to leverage it.

Barletta: Not really. In my book, published in 2003, I used the phrase 'multi-minded and integrated' to describe women's thought process (as opposed to 'single-minded and focused' for men). A study conducted by the United Nations in 106 different countries found that women were more likely to multi-task and were better at it than men. Findings in visual skills, brain anatomy, perception and decision-making processes suggest this 'multi-minded and integrated' facility is probably hardwired into women's biology. It’s valid to say this is a characteristic of women that is different from men... and that will hold for generations of future marketers!

Rand: With work, home and family responsibilities, today's 25-to-54-year old woman has become busier than ever. At any one moment, she is thinking about choices related to career, household, spousal, motherhood and personal responsibilities.

Why are marketers having more difficulty connecting with this group today?
Carr: This group is very smart. They are blocking out anything that does not improve their busy, active lifestyle. They’re not the pushover housewives of the 50s.
Barletta: Today’s women are beyond busy — they are time-starved. In the old days, women's responsibilities were concentrated on the home front. Today, being chief purchasing officer on the home front is a much more complicated deal, especially with big-ticket decisions, which require so much more research and investigation to buy than do most household items or apparel. In addition, 75% of women ages 25 to 54 work outside the home, which is a huge change from the old days. Yet, things haven’t changed so much in terms of home responsibilities: Full-time working wives still put in about 25 hours a week on housework, shopping and chores, about twice as much as their full-time working husbands. Finally, due to the miracles of modern medicine and longer life expectancies, no sooner do the kids go off on their own, but our parents need our help. In those situations, what typically happens is sons give money, daughters give time.

Skoloda: All consumers today are more difficult to reach because of the amount of information available via the proliferation of media. There are more than 200 cable television networks, more than 5,500 consumer magazines, more than 10,000 radio stations, and the Internet has mushroomed to more than 30 million sites. Now consider that women ages 25 to 54 in a Self magazine poll report only 54 minutes of personal time a day and also claim they pack 38 hours of activity into any 24-hour period, according to Yahoo! research. The result: They have little time or capacity for commercial messages.

Do you see traditional advertising ever able to connect effectively with this massive demographic group?
Carr: Absolutely. If it is to the point and makes sense, and does not talk down or patronize this audience.
Barletta: Because at 51% of the population, women are the majority, no 'traditional advertising' media planners worth their salt would ever try to reach this massive demographic group. They would work with the client to identify high-prospect segments within the group to focus on. It also depends on what you mean by 'traditional advertising.' 'Traditional advertising' from Procter & Gamble often connects with this group because it stays leading-edge on female gender culture and it 'gets' women better than most companies. If you're asking whether traditional media channels such as TV, print, Web sites, etc., can connect with these women – absolutely. Compared to what's out there now, huge opportunities exist to improve how this traditional advertising is done — requiring refining the message and refocusing the media approach.
Skoloda: Advertisers themselves say they’re not doing an effective job of connecting with women. Even if women are in front of the TV when a 30-second spot runs, they likely are thinking about several other things while the ad is running.
Rand: Traditional advertising, i.e., the 30-second TV commercial, continues to undergo dramatic revolution. We’re only at the cusp of the true evolution happening in the marketing-services industry, and marketers are grasping at what they can do to connect to this audience when many tried-and-true elements of the past aren’t working as effectively anymore. This push got exacerbated in the economic downturn when many companies were forced to evaluate critically their return on investment from their advertising spending. When they couldn’t rationalize and effectively gauge the return they were getting, it highlighted the fact they needed to make some changes in how they approached their marketing opportunities.
How do you see this demographic group changing over the next five years?
Carr: Getting more vocal, banding together... I think blogging is going to take off among women.
Barletta: Not to be flip, but the people in this demographic group will be getting older, moving them into the category of what I call 'PrimeTime Women' – i.e., 50-plus. To tell the truth, for many categories, even more opportunity exists among the often-overlooked PrimeTime group – who have more wealth and spend more per capita than any younger group.
Skoloda: According to BusinessWeek and other sources, women's purchasing power is only expected to grow. As these busy women get even busier, our research shows that credibility, quickly connecting with them, surrounding them with a message and consistently confirming their purchase decisions will be key.
Rand: The demands on women ages 25 to 54 will continue to increase. And their life stages will change, too, which will change their needs. Marketers that master how to communicate with these time-starved women, as Martha calls them, will reap the benefits and rewards.
• 2004, Issue 2: Unlocking Corporate Communications...
• 2004, Issue 1: Lessons Learned...
• 2003, Issue 2:
The Changing Face of Marketing
• 2003, Issue 1:
The First 100 Days of 2003
• 2002, Issue 2:
Focusing on Innovation
• 2002, Issue 1: David Maister Interview (PDF).

Additional Reading on Building Brand Believers

BOOKS

The Culting of Brands: When Customers Become True Believers, by Douglas Atkin, Portfolio Hardcover, published June 2004

Brandchild: Remarkable Insights Into The Minds Of Today's Global Kids And Their Relationships With Brands, by Martin Lindstrom, Butterworth-Heinemann, published November 2004.

Building Brands & Believers: How to Connect with Consumers Using Archetypes, by Kent Wertime, Wiley Publishers, published January 2003.

How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding, by Douglas B. Holt, Harvard Business School Press, published September 2004.

Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands, by Kevin Roberts, powerHouse Books, published April 2004.

The Power of Cult Branding: How 9 Magnetic Brands Turned Customers Into Loyal Followers (and Yours Can, Too), by Matthew W. Ragas and B.J. Bueno, Crown Business, published June 2002.

ARTICLES

Americans Continue to Be Loyal to National Brands, Marketing Today, Aug. 24, 2005.

Brand Rehab: How Companies Can Restore a Tarnished Image Knowledge @ Wharton, September 7-20, 2005

The Everyday Life of Consumer Brands, NOP World Perspectives, Spring 2005

Marketing Spending Effectiveness: How to Win in a Complex Environment, McKinsey & Co. White Paper

BLOGS

Marketing to a Specified Group

 

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