In a recent edition, ‘The Grocer’ Magazine asked:

If they don’t want girly beers, what DO women want?

They asked Aquitude CEO, Christina Ioannidis for her thoughts on the subject. Christina began her sales and marketing career as one of the first female sales-reps for Allied Domecq in Spain and has first hand knowledge of what female drinkers are thinking.

Excerpt

How to sell more beer to women? It’s a question many brewers have wrestled with over the past decade confronted by a steady decline in beer sales and consumption.

The brewing industry has been lobbying hard for a reduction in beer duty, but while pricing is obviously an important issue, brewers face another arguably much bigger challenge: broadening the category’s appeal.

The fact remains that the vast majority of beer is consumed by men, so the female market is largely untapped. Yet Carlsberg brand Eve and Molson Coors’Animée, which were both targeted squarely at women, failed. So how did the brewers get it so spectacularly wrong?

Are girly beers a dud concept full stop or was it the execution rather than the idea at fault? And if this approach isn’t going to work, what will?

…

Nevertheless, while it can be counterproductive, “gender-based targeting is worth it if you do it right,” insists Christina Ioannidis, CEO of Aquitude, a marketing agency focused on women as customers. She cites Baileys and niche vodka brand U’Luvka as two brands that have consistently shown they understand women through both presentation and activation.

“As women, we consume products in a different way to men,” she says. “We like incorporating little details and rituals, such as the lime with a bottle of Corona. A lot of brands go wrong because they don’t consult women in the NPD process. Seldom do they go out and properly explore their target market – often only doing that on a sampling basis when the type of product has already been decided.”

See the full article.. 

Communicate Magazine featured and article by Aquitude CEO, Christina Ioannidis. The piece brings together learnings from the book – Your Loss and recent research by Aquitude into attitudes of female consumers in the Middle East and other markets.

The Article titled – In The Pink can be downloaded here… Communicate Magazine Feb 2013

Excerpt – In the Pink

Can male marketers understand the female psyche? This question immediately evokes images of Mel Gibson’s fruitless attempts to understand “What Women Want”. The truth is that as a consumer demographic, women are the hardest market to sell to: their decision-making processes are complex, and capable of baffling the most sophisticated marketing communications professionals.

Hard growth.

The end of the last century and the beginning of the 21th century has seen the booming of the fastest growth demographic – women. In a 2009 piece entitled ‘The Female Economy’, the Harvard Business Review claimed that “Women now drive the world economy. Globally, they control about $20 trillion in annual consumer spending, and that figure could climb as high as $28 trillion in the next five years. Their $13 trillion in total yearly earnings could reach $18 trillion in the same period.

In aggregate, women represent a growth market bigger than China and India combined, more than twice as big, in fact.”

However, business owners and marketers have been challenged to cater to this highly discerning demographic. According to the Boston Consulting Group, over 91 percent of women state they are misunderstood by marketers; and 81 percent of our global “Marketing to Women” survey respondents agreed that marketing professionals in every sector should recognize that women have multiple roles and adapt their communications accordingly.

Moreover, a similar percentage of our panel agrees that male and female consumers are different and should be marketed to in different ways.

Other topics covered in the article include:

• Deal Breakers
• Perceptual Differences
• Being ‘Gender Savvy’
• Engaging her Heart
• Going the Extra Mile
• Working with her Mind
• Building sustainable relationships.

Aquitude’s recent research into how brands are engaging women consumers in the Middle East has caught the attention of the marketing press in the region. Christina Ioannidis – Aquitude CEO has written several features based on the research which found that in most cases, marketing professionals were not getting the message right for female consumers.

In December 2012, Gulf Marketing Review ran a 5 page feature with some of the key findings of the report.

Excerpt from Marketers are from Mars…

Download the Full Article 

Women are different from men, so they want to be treated differently from men. Get it? Apparently not.

Women are different from men and they want to be treated differently. A bit of a no brainer you would think, especially when it comes to such an insight-driven sector as marketing.

Not so, according to exclusive research for GMR, carried out by gender marketing specialist agency – UK-based Aquitude. Our findings showed that the vast majority – 77 per cent – of women in the region want to be marketed to in different ways from men.

The study also highlighted those categories that have been the least receptive to this viewpoint. In fact, there are quite a few categories – such as personal electronics – where respondents thought that men and women should share purchasing decisions equally, but were not addressed inclusively.

The tech sector, however, emerges as one of the biggest culprits in failing women; from search engines to mobile phones, women gave brands in this sector a big thumbs down. Financial services, however, were not far behind. And, none of the professional women who responded to our survey thought that car companies are good at understanding female consumers either.

Globally, 41 per cent say that property companies are bad at marketing to women; in the Gulf, it is 62 per cent.

Online reviews were perceived as the most trusted media source; traditional media, particularly newspapers, was also seen as being trustworthy. Computers and smartphones are the most trusted devices – being able to communicate in a two-way conversation is critical for women.

Download the full article.

It seems that the debate around whether or not motherhood is one of the primary drivers of women leaving business is set to rage on for a while yet, but our own research and conclusions suggest that there is more going on than the simple “women are leaving to have children” stereotype.

Corporations are increasingly losing their female talent. Top performing women are walking out the door of the world’s best known companies and turning their hand into entrepreneurship. In researching our book Your Loss: How to Win Back your Female Talent, we calculated that for corporations the cost of replacing lost women could be as much as £15 million per 10,000 employees. Annually.

These figures just do not add up. Why are corporations still incurring these losses? Why are they losing these women?

Senior women told us why they left their high-paying jobs and walked away from careers during their most productive years. Women yearn for a culture change in large corporations, which are run on out-dated rules and conventions, largely around the “old boy’s network”

Stereotyping and cultural bias is an every day occurrence which hampers women’s career progression. For one of our respondents, following the birth of her child, her previously unquestioned and highly productive arrangement of a day-a-week working from home suddenly came under scrutiny. Her colleagues would use air quotes when saying ‘working from home’ and exclude her on critical calls, as if she were using it as an excuse for a day off.

The only way to achieve this cultural change is to give employees responsibility for their own careers. Why should advancement and ambition be in a straight line on a graph, with a plateau at the top? Why can’t it have kinks and spurts or shifts across disciplines, according to what suits the individual? We live in a colourful world, and success does not require a straight line.

A leading headhunter in the UK advises corporations to have ‘more flexible career paths where companies can give individuals opportunities to try different skills or functions or geographies. One way of doing that, is companies giving individuals sabbaticals. The individual may or may not come back but the odds are that it will be a good thing for that company and for the individual if you take a long-term view. It could be to go and do a PhD, it could be to go and do volunteer service, or it could be to develop a business plan for something that that individual has always sought… That would have the greatest single impact because people have these sorts of entrepreneurial urges at all different stages of their career.”

Even just as critical, the women we spoke to told us that as they progressed up the career path, the passion for their jobs disappeared: ‘I decided that I wasn’t going to stay in a role where I felt zero passion. I felt that my heart was dying and I felt I was waking up in the morning just to go to work to pay bills. I wasn’t quitting to start my own business or to be an entrepreneur. I was quitting because I was no longer being authentic to myself, and I was no longer passionate about my work and my heart just felt like it was dying.’ admitted a former Plc executive, turned entrepreneur.

Our findings echo those of other studies: women desire personal fulfilment which is largely attributed to their personal development. By contrast, for men, a job is perceived as an activity which is rewarded by moving up the career ladder which is also best compensated by monetary means.

When asked what corporations could do to retain high-quality women, our survey respondents repeatedly made comments such as, ‘Talk to them regularly about what they’re looking for, really listen and be willing to act on what you hear. …Be thinking about what the right next step/role for her is ahead of time, rather than having to drum up something in a hurry when she says she’s leaving.’

48% of the women we surveyed, stated that ‘a chance to be more creative’ was one thing which welcomed them into their new entrepreneurial lives. Creativity ranked joint first alongside ‘more control and flexibility over my life’. This dual desire was unexpected even to us, but exposes a clear reason for women to leave corporate life. They feel creatively stifled. A collaborative culture leads to greater creativity through innovation and will therefore help retain high-performing women.

Corporations have gone down the route of creating Women’s Networks to help the development of their female talent. However, these groups serve largely to sideline women in minority groups. We believe it is key to utilise the power of the women’s network in creating work-groups to solve business-critical problems to support the development of the organisation. We also propose taking this one step further: deal with these Networks as a profit centre (rather than a cost centre) and invest in their activities as you would in a new business venture. As money talks, only clear and measurable ROI will get management attention – and offer an opportunity for their female talent to shine.

Our research has highlighted that 31% of women who left the corporate sphere thought that their ‘values did not align with the company’s’. In order to retain her loyalty, any organisation needs to take this into consideration. This is the intersection between a woman’s multiple roles as professional, family organiser and social nurturer. The Corporate brand and internal culture have to walk the CSR talk.

Gender-balanced Executive boardrooms are also needed. Whilst not an advocate for tokenism through quotas, something is required to break the status quo. The 30% Club model of making Chairmen accountable for the diversity on their Plc boards is a good start. This needs to be implemented at the Executive level too.

If companies don’t take action, it is their loss. Women globally will still find their voices by leaving the corporate domain and, increasingly, become entrepreneurs. However, corporations would have lost any hope of achieving diversity of thought and exacerbated their corporate blind-spots. This would be dangerous – as it is those blind-spots that led to the greatest financial crisis in modern history.

In this survey, Aquitude’s Purl Influencer Panel, in association with the UK’s Chartered Institute of Marketing’s ‘Women in Marketing’ network, aimed to uncover how female professionals perceive corporations are embracing this new growth market – both as consumers and, also, as Marketing practitioners.

In detail, the survey aimed to uncover:

• What is driving the dissatisfaction of female consumers?
• Which brands are perceived to be marketing to women effectively? Which are not?
• How can global corporations address challenges in targeting this growing market?
• Is the corporate gender-brain drain at fault as less and less women make it up the corporate ranks?

This survey was open to members of the Purl Influencer Panel from around the world, as well as the UK’s Chartered Institute of Marketing’s ‘Women in Marketing’ network. Respondents included professional women, work in the USA, Australia, UK, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Participants work in a wide variety of industries including Advertising, Financial Services, Consumer Goods, Retail, Energy as well as entrepreneurial roles.

Some of the  findings included:

What do women want? They want to be engaged honestly without marketing tricks or gimmicks.

There is a need for continuity when it comes to the brand values and the shopping environment – the emotional response at the point of sale continues to be a big influence on the way brands are perceived.

“Likes” do not drive women’s needs – the primary purpose for using social networks is to interact with friends first and foremost and brands second, if at all.

Brands need to engage in dialogue with the female market.

Women have multiple roles and marketing professionals should adapt their communications accordingly.

The worst sectors at marketing to women are IT (over 40% of respondents say the sector is doing a bad job), Financial Services and the Automotive sector.

Dove and L’Oreal are seen to be getting it right, but Olay on the other hand has more neutral perceptions about its female-centric marketing.

Microsoft and Blackberry are losing the software battle.

Banks and Financial Services trail behind – with global brands Citi and Barclays trailing the most.

The panel believes that the lack of gender diversity in corporate boardrooms, as well as in Marketing positions, is the clear culprit in companies losing touch with their female consumers.

Over the last few months, Aquitude – via the Purl Influencer Panel has been conducting a survey into the attitudes of women in relation to brands and marketing.

It is our intention to publish the results of this survey and similar regional surveys to highlight the areas where brands winning and losing in their battle to market themselves to women.

In this, the first piece of analysis of the survey results, we look at a general question about how women think they are influenced by brands.

The question we asked our panel of women was:

How important are the following factors when it comes to influencing your perception of brands?

The following is the aggregated ranking of the factors.

1. The way they communicate
2. Their service levels
3. The look and feel of their online or offline stores
4. The attitude of their staff
5. Their advertising campaigns
6. The way they interact on social media
7. ‘Celebrity’ Endorsement.

The results are perhaps not surprising. What do women want? They want to be engaged honestly without marketing tricks or gimmicks.

Sometimes it may be the case that millions of dollars worth of marketing budget is ruined by the delivery of the product or service by uncaring employees or supply chain partners. Brand building is after-all about repeat purchase and loyalty, not a one-off transaction.

Similarly, there is a need for continuity when it comes to the brand values and the shopping environment. Whether it be a flagship store, concession or website – the emotional response at the point of sale continues to be a big influence on the way brands are perceived.

The results show that our panel are not the kind of women to be swayed by celebrity endorsement, but they are also not too concerned with the way brands use social media. (We will cover social media in more detail later in the series).

Perceptions are emotional responses, so trying to quantify the elements that go into the way we feel about brands is difficult. Perhaps that is why the less specific answers ranked more highly.

Our panel say that communication is a big factor when if comes to their perception of brands, but specific kinds of communication are seen as less important.

As part of our ‘Marketing to Women’ survey, we asked women in the Purl Influencer Panel to answer some questions about their relationship with brands and social media.

Our analysis of brand perceptions suggested that social media was not as important as factors like service levels or the look and feel of stores or websites – in fact, the way brands interact on social media was ranked 6th out of 7 in a list of things that influence women’s perceptions of brands.

However when asked directly about social media, 85% of women surveyed think that social media is an important tool for brands to engage with female consumers.

Is Social Media an important tool to engage female consumers?

Do women Like brands on Facebook?

However, just because women say that social media is an important tool, doesn’t mean that they are using it for that purpose. Like mobile phones, which are used for peer-t0-peer communication, the primary purpose for using social networks is to interact with friends first and foremost and brands second, if at all.

Of the 78% of women surveyed who use Facebook – 42% have ‘liked’ a brand, which while less than half is still a large number when you think about the numbers of people who use Facebook.

Have you 'liked' any companies, products or brands on Facebook?

Do women Follow brands on Twitter?

Different social media is used by different kinds of people for different reasons. Twitter is misunderstood by many, but it can be a powerful communication tool for brands to talk to consumers and vice-versa.

Over 70% of the women in the Purl Influencer Panel use Twitter – which is a surprising number in itself. This is higher than we would expect in the ‘average’ population, but it could show that Twitter is used as a tool where the currency is influence.

However, of the women who do use Twitter, fewer are using it to ‘follow’ brands. Only 21% of those who use Twitter follow brands.

Do you 'Follow' any companies or brands on Twitter?

Aquitude CEO, Christina Ioannidis will join a seminar in the UAE to discuss marketing to women. As featured in the May edition of Gulf Marketing review, the event will be the 6th Marketing to Women conference.

The event aims to tackle the subject of change – social, financial, behavioural – and how it impacts female consumers and their brand relationships. The one day conference will feature research – including results from the Purl Influencer Panel UAE Marketing to Women survey-  insights and thought leadership and take place at the Westin Hotel in Dubai.

Marketing directors from companies and brands like Johnson & Johnson, Fonterra Middle East, Unilever NAME and Philips Middle East will cover an array of topics from healthcare, nutrition, sustainability, ARAC research and social media usage.

As reported by GMR:

The panel is joined by London-based Christina Ioannidis, founder and CEO of specialist marketing to women agency Aquitude and author of Your Loss – How to Win Back Your Female Talent: A Gender Savvy Business Plan for Competitive Advantage, who will discuss women in the workplace.

Christina’s presentation and feedback from the event will be posted after the conference.

Despite this growth, women are still not catered to as consumers. Boston Consulting Group’s Women Want More research indicated that the majority of the female market feel that they are ignored as consumers. Aquitude’s PowerMinds Dinners – women-centric focus groups – have resulted in similar findings in relation to marketing to women.

Their biggest issue? Engagement.

The rules of engagement for marketers have changed. It is no longer about just marketing a product with a fluffy name, or even coloured pink, as Dell experienced to its detriment. Savvy female consumers are demanding that companies and brands engage with them in a deep and meaningful way.

What does deep and meaningful mean though, in a market that is chasing its tail in the midst of a recession? Brands looking to win female consumers need to Listen, Understand and Act.

Listen - Female Consumers like to talk.

Listen and hear – take the time and speak to your female consumers and their inner circle; then act on exactly what she needs to have happen. A women customer needs testament of your promise to her by showing you will act on what SHE has told you. In our PowerMinds process, we invite women to join us with their friends to discuss their views on a product or service. Conversation that is open, honest and flows with personal insight will improve your brand and get female consumers to engage with your brand.

Understand – Marketing to Women requires Comprehension.

Next in your female marketing process, break down what she has told you into concrete actions. Confirm your assumptions about female consumers with her, follow up with what she told you and consciously involve her in the design process. Don’t think that this will annoy her – on the contrary, she will appreciate you care enough to count on her input.

Beware of using the “replication” formula. Women respond better to intimate, engaging communication and language and not a mass market approach – make her feel special, involve her in the process; act like you mean it and be authentic. Speak to her directly – call her and speak to her; chose email as a quick, secondary strategy to provide additional information if required. Find ways to involve her in the dissemination of your product – get her to be your brand ambassador.

Act – Show You have listened and understood.

Engage with women directly and, as a time-conscious beings that women are, ensure you adopt technology to do so. Women aged 35-49 years old are the fastest growing demographic in social networking and blogging. Women also spend more time than men researching products before a given purchase. Their first port of call? The internet. And when on the web, she is a rampant review reader and she cherishes information from other female bloggers/users.

So when you are putting your proposition to her, make sure she can read in-depth information and have wide-ranging reviews from other women. Ensure you have an information line as well, where she can turn to to have her questions answered in a friendly, un-patronising way.

Make sure she can reach your site though. 91% of women use Google as their search engine. Consequently, you need your site to be optimized to appear in organic searches on that search engine. 52% of women will change their search terms and try again if they don’t find the results they want on the first results page. So knowing what she is looking for, the search terms she will use and making sure your page is at the top of that search is key. This is where the science of search engine optimization comes to the fore.

And finally, engage her senses – provide visual stimuli, such as video (which, will also enhance Google rankings) to get her involved with your brand. The more you draw her eyes in, the more she will spend time on your site, and the higher the likelihood of her connecting with your brand (and buying…)…

Be creative on how she can use your brand in way that makes her life easier (and sometimes more fun) by also including her inner circle of friends. Women are 21 times more likely to share a positive experience with others, unlike men who are only 2.6 times more like to resort to word of mouth.

The rules of engagement in today’s crowded marketplace are simple: engage her directly to your brand and branded experiences – but first Listen, Understand and then Act. Make sure it is done in that order though – breaking the chain and acting without listening is likely to lead you to repeat marketing faux pas of the past.

Employee demographics are changing. The post-war baby boomers, who fueled the exponential growth of the world economy, are retiring. In the UK, 550,000 people a year reach pensionable age; in 2012 it is expected to peak to 807,000 (over 50% more than usual). The UK will be short of 1.3 million 30-44 year olds by 2030. The economic impact of this will be substantial, as it will drain the country’s pension-tanks. However, the skills shortage will be an abhorrent reality for corporations. They will be faced with the looming impact of not enough qualified candidates to steer their corporate ships.

What can your company do to avoid crashing on the rocks of lack of talent?

1. Maximise retention of ALL your talent: Women hold the keys to your Future

Over 60 per cent of university graduates are women; 50 percent of graduate recruits are women in most organisations. However, only 5 per cent make it to the boardroom. Retention is the name of the game here – create a working culture that inspires women to stay, grow, develop and perform at their peak levels. Beware of the Maternity or other gender-based stereotypes. One of the best comments I have recently heard from a female multi-millionaire entrepreneur is:

“If a woman is capable enough to run a home and work, then she is good enough to work for me. She can definitely multi-task. She does not need to me micromanaged and can bring in serious results”.

2. Groom, Grow, Reap Rewards

Foster your top talent, currently in their 30s and 40s, to take the reins in supervisory, managerial and leadership roles. They will need hands-on, practical development in dealing with very hard economic realities (for example. running operations on a shoe-string, to avoid negatively impacting the bottom line); they are likely to be leading multinational, cross-border teams which do not only not speak the same language, but are also governed by differing cultural norms.

Understanding diverse view-points will be key; high emotional intelligence will be the catalyst to do so. Resilience skills in leading during uncertainty, and change, will need to be coupled with refined communication and influencing skills. Most CEOs have 30 years of tenure under their belts to achieve this; your future leaders will have a half of that. Businesses will thus need to short-circuit and nurture this talent, to reap long term rewards.

Understanding women as employees can also help your business understand women as consumers. Being great at marketing to women is not a bad by-product of understanding female views.

3. Be flexible: Retain Baby Boomers

The facts are simple – there are not enough young people to fuel your leadership pipeline. So, one of the simplest things to do is to retain the baby boomers themselves. A lot of over 65’s are resorting to social enterprises, philanthropy and even entrepreneurship in order to fulfill their career aspirations after they leave the corporate track. Find ways to retain them – intrapreneurship is key. Let your baby boomers create, run, invest and grow your business’ future potential revenue streams.

4. Recruit the …. Unrecruitable!

To build a spirit of entrepreneurship, with its inherent innovation and flexibility, corporations will have to balance their innate risk-aversion and process driven cultures with innovative talent, talent that is willing to challenge the status quo in order to positively impact the bottom line. Entrepreneurs do this naturally – they are wired to identify product and service gaps, and create ways to overcome them. This is relevant in any part of the business – product development, operations, marketing, finance, IT. These innovation skills, however, are not easy to come by – so consider recruiting those who have gone out there and “done it”. Inject enterprise in your business.

Don’t sit on your laurels. Your competitive advantage does not rest on your systems or processes. It rests on your people. After all, it is your people who run the systems….