Why are classic boring advertisements always aimed at women?

Have you ever noticed how these days the quality of advertising has improved?

The commercial break often is more entertaining than the TV-shows that are interrupted by them. It’s because marketers feel like people have become so overexposed to advertising that people have become extremely hard to influence.

To respond to this marketers have adopted a new vision on their customers. They no longer see their customers as people that need to buy their products. They see their customers as people that need to enjoy their brand and products. They try to make as intelligent, original and entertaining advertising as they can in order to influence their potential customers.

Have you ever noticed how about 95% of this new original, creative and entertaining advertising is directed to men (or both men and women)?

Have you ever noticed how about 95% of the old classic boring advertising is directed at women?

Marketing actions directed to women are usually clearly made by marketers that seem to assume that their customers are a brainless herd that needs to be directed in the right direction, their direction.

It often excels in a lack of originality. If you’ve seen one advertisement for washing products you’ve seen them all. If it’s something you haven’t seen a zillion times before, it usually is because it wants to give you something new to be insecure about. ‘You may not smell how much your house stinks, but other people do.’ ‘Have you ever thought about how ugly your armpits are?’

On top of that advertisements that are aimed at women, usually have a woman that you are supposed to want to be. In Italy where everybody has brown hair, this woman you should aspire, usually is a blonde. In Asia, Africa and Latin-America she usually is fair-skinned. So the message of these advertisements is: ‘you may not ever be able to be blonde like me, but you do can have a house that smells like mine’ or ‘you won’t ever be white like me, but you do can get lovely armpits like mine.’ One of the few examples of a diverse advertising campaign is the Ikea-catalog, Ikea, coming from the country with all the natural blondes.

Advertising directed at women often assumes women are stupid. It encourages old insecurities and creates new ones. The marketing industry is not dominated by men. There are nearly just as many men as women in it. In companies aimed at women there usually are more women than men working in the marketing department.

So the problem isn’t that men use marketing to make women feel down so they can more easily suppress them. The problem is that there are too many women and men in the marketing industry that see (other) women as idiots. The problem is that there aren’t enough women and men that are brave enough to create a marketing strategy aimed at making women enjoy their brand.