Lesbian Issues - Women Only Marketing

TOPICS: Lesbian communications. Women marketing. Communications news. Lesbian related news. Mainstream communications issues. Mainstream marketing news. Lesbian advertising. Marketing targeting women only. Women targeted as 'new' niche market in UK. Pink pound. Women only products and female targeted advertising.

Ian Johnson, Out Now
August 20, 2007


It has always amazed me that when we speak to many market decision-makers about making great lesbian and gay marketing, there is often a primary focus by some clients on the 'gay' element of our work (meaning gay male marketing), with less attention in the marketing initially being paid to the importance of developing effective marketing campaigns for the lesbian component of the market place.

Things are slowly changing, but there is still some slowness in evolving the market so as to match gay marketing strategies with the demographic realities that women make up half the world's population.

It may not always be so easy for clients to see initially, but the smarter clients do understand - such as the pictured image from a 2004 Out Now Consulting campaign for Lufthansa, in the Netherlands.

Lesbian communications needs to be inclusive and supportive and must usually seek to avoid stereotypes and being inadvertently patronizing to lesbian women.

Latest news from the UK shows that women as a mainstream market are the 'new' niche target for marketers.

That is not news to us, but we thought it was interesting and reflects what we have been arguing for years in the gay market place - that marketing in an inclusive manner to lesbians is not just a 'nice' thing to do - it is smart business.

There is an interesting article in the UK Daily Mail about this whole 'Marketing to Women' as a new niche market emphasis.

Here is an extract for you.

As girls get richer and richer, make way for the new PINK pound

Though it may sound more like a scene from the film Legally Blonde, picture an airline of pink planes, travelling between the world's top shopping venues offering manicures and pink champagne pre-take off.

No doubt the in-flight movies would be pure chick flick and the average customer would resemble Big Brother twins Sam and Amanda. Oh, and men are not allowed.

This Utopian dream (for some) is the brainchild of 24-year-old entrepreneur Adam Charles, founder of Fly Pink, a budget boutique airline mooted to start flights later this year between Liverpool's John Lennon airport and Paris.

The women-only airline is clearly aiming at hen parties and what Charles hopes is a growing market of moneyed women who like certain areas of their lives men-free.

No doubt these women would also love Pink Beach, near Rimini, a revolutionary concept for macho Italy and a welcome move for female holidaymakers fed up with being gawped at by flabby men in overtight Speedos.

Legendary or not, Latin lovers (and men in general) are banned from Beach 134, which sits on the 50-mile stretch of sand on the Adriatic coast between Rimini and Riccione.

The local council - no doubt sensitive to the growing demand for female rights in Italy and the sizable Muslim tourist trade, as well as having a canny eye on the headlines - has banned men, fried food and loud music.

The result is a delightful stretch of heaven where you can buy gourmet level calorie-controlled salads and fruit (there is even a local celebrity chef to cook onsite) while enjoying lessons in deportment, keep-fit sessions, manicures and pedicures.

The only man allowed on Pink Beach is the lifeguard, proving that even for businessman and beach owner Fausto Ravaglia there is a limit to the new wave of female rights.

"The lifeguard must be a man," he says. "You clearly need to be a man to save women in the sea. It's a question of muscles."

But you could forgive men, muscles or not, for feeling a little marginalised these days, when there are women-only airlines, beaches, financial services, taxi firms, hotel floors, car insurance, and social networking sites on the internet.

Niche marketing rules and women are suddenly the niche that everyone is chasing. While it is tempting to see this as a long-awaited rise in feminist-driven economics - it is finance and not feminism driving the trend. Everyone wants to cash in on women's increasing spending power.

In April the Economist magazine wrote: "Forget China, India and the internet, economic growth is driven by women."

According to Data monitor, the world's leading provider of online data, of the
376,000 millionaires in the UK, 46 per cent are female - and their numbers are growing by 11 per cent every year.

And the economic boom isn't just restricted to the top end of the market. We aren't just holding the purse strings and making 85 per cent of the shopping decisions, women are also buying the purse.

Leaving families until later to concentrate on a career has helped make women a financial force to be reckoned with. According to Emma Lainey founder of Syren, a female-focused marketing company that has worked with Jimmy Choo and Weight Watchers, this is "partly to do with a new generation of so-called kitchen-table tycoons."

"On average single women earn more than single men - it is only post-kids and marriage that inequality creeps in".

Amanda McCrystal of Bramdiva, the women focused financial services company she launched with Nicola Horlick in 2005, agrees: "In 20 years' time, 60 per cent of the country's wealth will reside with women.

As Emma says: "Some of the traditional marketing is just not valid any more - you have to do more than paint everything pink."

Take, for example, American Airlines. There was uproar when the company launched a networking website that offered travelling tips for its female customers. The site was deemed "patronising".

You have to wonder then what they'd make of Fly Pink.

Another company which offers no apologies over its chosen hue is Pink Ladies, the Warwickshire-based taxi firm which offers women-only taxis that are "all girly" on the inside, with pink, immaculately clean interiors and women drivers.

For co-founder Tina Dutton, the impulse for launching the company in 2005 was safety. "I was watching the news about a women raped by an illegal taxi driver."

"It made me think how trusting you have to be as a woman when you get into a minicab, and how much safer women would feel if they knew a the cab driver was female," she recalls. "We started with 14 cars 11 weeks later."

You have to be a member to use the cars and every driver is trained in self-defence. As for the eye-catching vehicles, it creates a strong tribal identity and certainly, you would never get into the wrong cab by mistake.

Even a sex change won't get you into a Pink Ladies vehicle. "If it says male on the birth certificate we won't have them as clients," states Dutton, who feels the female-only safety angle is a core brand value.

And they are not the only company to cause uproar from the male population.

Sheilas' Wheels enjoys a sizable gay following - and receives bundles of letters from straight men, irritated that they cannot join the party.

"The truth is that we don't outlaw men," explains Webb. "There is a big difference between targeting women and only insuring women - but there are a lot of angry blokes out there."

Men are not banned from using banking firm Bramdiva either, though they might not feel inclined to once they see the branding.

For Amanda McCrystal - whose company offers a buff and pale pink website with features on inheritance tax and court rulings on million-pound divorces - Bramdiva is not so much about having a different product but delivering it in a different way.

"We don't offer funds that only women can invest in, it is about the process women go through in financial planning. They take longer to make decisions, and are more likely to have large amounts of money floating around."

Another area experimenting with female-focused marketing is the hotel trade. Grange Hotels chain has piloted a scheme with female-only floors in its London hotel.

Aimed at lone female travellers, the floors are accessible only through separate key cards, while the rooms themselves offer anti-mist mirrors, powerful hairdryers and a better standard of toiletries.

According to Webb it is an initiative that Westerners appreciate more than travellers from the Far East, whose male dominated societies are perhaps uncomfortable with women being singled out in this way.

Marketeers such as Emma Lainey appreciate firms like these which take a more holistic approach to targeting women. "Integrated femininity is about understanding the values and attitudes of females and a lot of brand messaging and met-aphors and insecurities that are not valid any more.

"Sky plus, Orange, Virgin and First Direct are all companies that do a good job of speaking to women."

So, after years of fighting for equality are we insulted by the plethora of female-focused businesses or happy that finally, we can nudge men out of the picture and slip into something pink?

Let your wallets do the voting.

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