Open Letter To Advertisers

[joreth]

Picture this...

The screen fades from black to show a man sleeping in bed.  His eyes pop open.  Cut to another man bouncing out of his bed in his pajamas.  Cut to yet another man running down the stairs.  Show a series of different men all acting like children on Christmas morning, running to the tree, tearing open the presents, and all finding Craftsman tools, or Makita, or Dewalt, or Black & Decker, whatever.  The men are excited, behaviour has regressed, this is the best thing EVAR!  Some voice-over says something witty about getting your man what he really wants this holiday season: a set of their tools.

Dear Advertisers of Manly Stuff;

I don't know if you know this, but I'm a woman and I like tools.  Seeing ads like this on TV around the holidays makes me feel excluded from the very things that I love.  It's like when I was a kid and saw commercials for my favorite toys, but there were no girls playing with those toys, even though I knew lots of girls who liked those toys.  Since there were no girls on the commercials and no girls on the packaging, the adults in my life refused to buy me those toys because they weren't "girl toys".  But I loved them!

Commercials like these don't just make me feel excluded.  They make me think that I am deliberately unwanted.  Oh, sure, when it comes to money, you're willing to cater to the women.  But you make our tools less powerful, smaller, and pink or purple.  I want my industrial yellow, 15-bajillion hertz Dewalt power drill, not some frilly purple drill with flowers on it that doesn't even have enough power to screw in my picture hardware.

I know this may come as a shock to you, but I don't hang pictures.  I build shit.  I fix my car.  And I don't mean that I change tires (although I do).  I've rebuilt my own carbuerator.  I built the shed out back.  I've installed load-bearing walls.  I operate heavy machinery.  I have all the best name-brands and a better tool collection than my father - a manly man who taught me how to use a circular saw and to hunt deer and let me steal sips of his beer when mom wasn't looking.  I have multiple tool chests for different kinds of work, and I have specialty tools just for certain industries that your average guy won't have.  And, here's even more of a shock, I also like cooking and sewing and men.  And (are you sitting down?) I'm not the only one.

Maybe tool purchases by women only make up 10% of your sales (although I don't believe it's that low for a minute, but let's say for the sake of argument).  Would it really kill you to throw in a single woman in that holiday morning montage?  A girl amidst the dozen men who tears off the packaging while wearing fuzzy pajamas with snowflakes on them and finds a black and blue Kobalt power drill or air compressor or something - a good, powerful tool that matches her fuzzy pajamas - and who shakes her fists and grins and gives her husband a bear hug in thanks?  Just one?  You can even make her blonde and young and pretty.  At this point, I'd settle for a token woman.

Maybe you're afraid that the big manly men won't want to buy that brand of tool if you suggest that women like it too.  But maybe you'll win tons of loyal female customers to make up for the handfuls of chauvanistic pricks who refuse to buy a good tool just because some chick also knows it's a good tool.  Most men won't stop buying something good just because they find out that some women like it too - in fact, they probably won't even notice the woman in the commerical at all, because they probably never noticed her absence in the first place.  But word will spread that you are including women, and not pandering to them, and women notice that.  They'll go out of their way to buy YOUR brand when they need a tool, especially if you're the only, or the first, brand to do this.  If you ever thought men cornered the market on being brand-loyal, you've never seen "loyal" until you've treated a woman customer like a person, listened to what she wanted, and offered her a quality product without assuming she wouldn't be interested or doesn't understand or must be buying for her husband.

Throw in a female in your advertising - make me think that you appreciate my business, because I appreciate your products and want to buy more of them.  Only I won't if I think I can get better service from another company, and the next generation of women won't if they continue to get bombarded with messages that say that your products are not for them.  Don't girlie-up your tools, don't make tools - or commericals - exclusively for women and leave out the men.  Just include us.  That's all we're asking for.  Treat us like human beings first, paying customers second, and only like women if you have a shot at the parts that make us women.

Sincerely,
A Woman Who Likes Tools

Comments

Bravo!

[terryo.livejournal.com]

Tools are for anyone who can use them... They are missing a big market segment and they won't hit it (as you say) by making them 'pretty'... I even dislike chrome on wrenches!

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe you're afraid that the big manly men won't want to buy that brand of tool if you suggest that women like it too. But maybe you'll win tons of loyal female customers to make up for the handfuls of chauvanistic pricks who refuse to buy a good tool just because some chick also knows it's a good tool. Most men won't stop buying something good just because they find out that some women like it too - in fact, they probably won't even notice the woman in the commerical at all, because they probably never noticed her absence in the first place.

Earlier this year one of the networks ran an MLB game with a female commentator. I forget her whole CV, as I don't follow sports, but she is huge in the realm of softball & has worked hard in to baseball. Folks I know who follow sports say she really knows her stuff.

Guys were OUTRAGED that they dared to have a woman in a lead position talking about a "man's game." Ratings plunged as channels were changed & TVs turned off. Guys overloaded the switchboard vowing to seek alternate sources for their sports if the network did it again, and the woman plus all the men involved got death threats. Outside experts said she did a technically proficient very accurate analysis, better than some of the men... but people didn't even hear it because they were so mad a woman was saying it.

The network hasn't brought her back, and despite the fact that they hyped it having her on didn't bring in any women.

I know it's not an exact comparison to what you're describing, but that's the kind of reaction the advertising copywriters & tool companies are afraid of. Not a handful of chauvinistic pricks, but a huge mob of them - with no commensurate uptick in business.

Those perceptions have to be challenged before they change their business model, and I don't know how to do that.

[joreth]

I agree that they have to be challenged, and that's exactly what I'm suggesting. I'm also suggesting baby steps. It doesn't surprise me that throwing in a female lead in an industry that really does have more male consumers than female led to that kind of response. Disappointing, but not surprising.

However, my cousin is Brandi Chastain, gold-medalist soccer player Olympian-turned sportscaster. She has successfully moved into that very arena without collapsing the soccer industry. So I know that, even in your specific example, this is something that can be done.

Also, advertising statistics have shown that women are the primary consumers across the board and have been for decades - if they're not shopping for themselves, they're shopping for their husbands & families. Other manufacturers have realized this and made the switch successfully. Look at Nike, for example: a sports equipment producer that has a very strong pro-female message. One of their most successful moves ever, and something that saved them from irrelevancy at one point, was catering to the female demographic - and doing it in a respectful and not condescending way.

My suggestion isn't to bail on the tool-loving guys, but to add in a single woman in a montage of faces that is overwhelmingly male. I strongly suspect that guys won't even notice because I've seen it happen before.

I worked for a BMW conference not too long ago. They showed a car commercial during the conference that included both men & women voice-overs talking about how much they like their cars. But the images were exclusively of James Bond-esque men getting into, out of, and driving sporty BMWs in a montage, and there were only 2 scenes that showed women - both of the woman getting into or out of the passenger seat (young blonde women with short skirts and high heels, and low camera angles). I made a comment about how exclusionary that was, and all the men on the crew looked up in surprise - they didn't even see what I had pointed out. Even after pointing it out, they could not see the lack of women in the commercial, nor why it was a problem because "there are women speaking in the voice-overs".

So, I strongly suspect that guys who buy tools will not notice 1 woman out of 10 men in a 30-second commercial montage excitedly opening up a tool on Christmas morning, and the ones who do will be both few in number and outnumbered by the women who flock to the brand (assuming they don't manage to fuck it up by being condescending when they do it, like giving her a pink mini-hammer or something) like what happened when Nike courted the female demographic successfully.

[(Anonymous)]

I tend to agree with you, but the issue is convincing the CEOs and advertising guys who believe differently & are scared by the sports example.
The Nike argument's a good one, how do you move that to them on a larger scale?

[joreth]

I'm not in advertising, so I don't have any practical advice on this subject. But I do know that the thing with Nike is well-known in the advertising business and is studied in school. It isn't a recent thing, it's an ongoing ad campaign that started something like 20 years ago or more.

Also, Nike is a powerhouse as far as advertising dollars go, so to "move that to them on a larger scale" is hard to even imagine. Nike is the kind of company that everyone wants to be. Those CEOs and advertising guys already know the Nike story and they know what has happened to other companies that tried it (same results, AFAIK).

So there's something else going on there. Advertising has gotten progressively more gender segregated in the last 20-30 years in spite of progressively more socially liberal gender values. This is a much deeper problem than just a handful of guys over at Craftsman sitting around a dark, wood-paneled room smoking cigars and congratulating themselves on another sexist commercial.

[ximinez]

It's possible that your example says more about baseball fans than it does about men in general.

That aside, I wonder what would have happened if they had continued the experiment and given time for word to spread to women baseball fans (and they do exist). Hate reactions are fast and loud. Loyalty / love takes quite a bit longer to build.