As the nation gears up to cel­e­brate its moth­ers, brands are eager­ly tar­get­ing both sex­es with mes­sag­ing intend­ed to encour­age con­sumer spend while also thank­ing Mom. Much of the mes­sag­ing for Mother’s Day cam­paigns is emo­tion­al, as in the cas­es of brands like Hall­mark, Pan­do­ra, Elec­trolux and Hug­gies. But the same can be said of mar­ket­ing to women over­all, although the broad­er tar­get often includes inspir­ing and/or empow­er­ing mes­sages as well, such recent exam­ples from Dove, Lane Bryant and even Dodge. With all of this emo­tion and empow­er­ment float­ing around, we want­ed to know what women in the adver­tis­ing indus­try actu­al­ly think about how their peers tar­get the so-called fair­er sex and we asked 10 female adver­tis­ing exec­u­tives for their takes on adver­tis­ing to women.

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Women demand authen­tic­i­ty and so the brands that want to engage with them must there­fore speak gen­uine­ly. And per­haps some­what unex­pect­ed­ly, the women we spoke to also made repeat­ed calls for mar­keters to inte­grate more humor in cam­paigns for women rather than focus­ing so much on emo­tion and wor­ry.

And while acknowl­edg­ing that male cre­atives can cer­tain­ly come up with good cam­paigns for women, they also not­ed increased diver­si­ty among inter­nal cre­ative teams would also be ben­e­fi­cial for the indus­try at large.

Their per­spec­tives fol­low.

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Corinna Falusi, Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy & Mather Advertising New York

While mar­keters oper­ate in a world with two rec­og­nized sex­es, con­sumers on a very per­son­al lev­el iden­ti­fy with dif­fer­ent gen­der iden­ti­ties. For exam­ple, Diane Sawyer’s recent inter­view with Bruce Jen­ner. That inter­view made glob­al head­lines and we should­n’t cyn­i­cal­ly dis­miss the moment as just a launch plat­form for a new real­i­ty series. Instead, we should see it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reject our tra­di­tion­al view of gen­der and how we mar­ket it to them.

It’s a dif­fer­ent world. I antic­i­pate more brands will seize this oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with the trans­gen­der com­mu­ni­ty through their cre­ative work. I’m sure we will see more cam­paigns fea­tur­ing trans­gen­der indi­vid­u­als in the months ahead and I’d be sur­prised if they don’t do well in next year’s award sea­son.

For brands that only or most­ly tar­get women, the most com­mon mis­take is lazy depic­tions of tra­di­tion­al female stereo­types. Women’s inter­ests go beyond just look­ing pret­ty and being the best mom in the world.

Mar­keters need to go beyond these con­ven­tions and cre­ate cam­paigns that are more real­is­tic in address­ing the chal­lenges women face today. My favorite exam­ple was a cou­ple of years ago when a car man­u­fac­tur­er dis­cov­ered women as a poten­tial tar­get and pro­mot­ed cars with spe­cial fea­ture tar­get­ed towards women. They fea­tured a spe­cial rear view mir­ror for apply­ing make­up. Total fail.

On the oth­er hand, the world’s best mar­ket­ing to women comes from Apple – the biggest and pos­si­bly most influ­en­tial com­pa­ny in the world. They have the ben­e­fit of not hav­ing a prod­uct specif­i­cal­ly aimed at women, but their work con­nects with all audi­ences.

I real­ly miss humor! I like to laugh and I assume oth­er women do as well. Where are the fun­ny ads aimed at female audi­ences? I real­ly liked First Moon Par­ty for HelloFlo. This one real­ly stands out for the humor. I must have seen thou­sands of tam­pon ads – this is the only one I remem­ber.

With the excep­tion of a few brands, per­haps most notably Nike, Under Armour, Dove, and Sim­i­lac, work­ing on a female brand is not an award-win­ning assign­ment. The brands I men­tioned above acknowl­edge the demands and chal­lenges that all women face every day. We relate to them because it seems like the brand talk­ing to me under­stands me – it does­n’t assume that we’re like Bet­ty Drap­er in “Mad Men”.

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Tracy Richards, CMO at Organic

One of the biggest things that I look at when it comes to mar­ket­ing to women is authen­tic­i­ty. That’s a lot of what I’ve seen that is work­ing in the indus­try. Things like Under Armour with Misty Copeland is a real sto­ry, a per­son­al sto­ry, and authen­tic. These are the things that speak to women.

Women are more emo­tion­al, but they’re also more social and the social aspect has become interesting…because [cam­paigns are] get­ting notice because of women shar­ing what is speak­ing to them.

Men tend to be more set in their ways in terms of how they’re spo­ken to and women are more inter­est­ed in the new and exciting…but there is also the flip side and it can some­times have a bit of back­lash.

Think about the Pan­tene cam­paign, Labels. The ad talks about how men are [bet­ter­ing them­selves], while a woman is con­sid­ered vain. But it’s one of those things, for a brand like Pan­tene, they’re sell­ing sham­poo, so there can be both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions based on the prod­uct you’re try­ing to pro­mote. The point with Pan­tene is that the mes­sag­ing is great – it’s a real sto­ry and authen­tic, but, at the same time, it maybe doesn’t fit with the prod­uct.

Peo­ple want to tug at heart­strings and try to con­nect and when brands do that in an unau­then­tic way, it has backlash…Pantene’s sen­ti­ment is right, but it’s almost con­trived.

More brands and mar­keters are look­ing to break through bar­ri­ers that are out there. The Depends Under­ware­ness cam­paign takes some­thing that used to be in the back­ground and makes it more nor­mal and OK.

Also, my two-and-a-half-year-old daugh­ter would rather play with trucks than dolls and I think the mes­sag­ing to young girls and how we’re speak­ing to girls [is chang­ing] and…marketers are get­ting bet­ter at that and under­stand­ing they should put mes­sag­ing out there, but there’s still a good amount of way to go.

I recent­ly saw an ad for Pan­do­ra that was basi­cal­ly a spot show­ing chil­dren blind­fold­ed and able to pick out their moth­ers, which tugs at the heart­strings and show­ing those con­nec­tions, so that did a good job.

And this is kind of a strange one because I think it was meant to be geared more toward men, but Guin­ness had a wheel­chair spot [Friend­ship], which was show­ing game of bas­ket­ball with guys in wheel­chairs and then at the end every­one stands up, so it was about friend­ship and being part of a team and show­ing sup­port for friends and while the com­mer­cial itself was geared toward men, it also…appealed to women, which I think goes back to the authen­tic­i­ty and per­son­al and real sto­ries.

Women tend to be more inter­est­ed in things that are new and excit­ing and are far less for­giv­ing and are going to be less like­ly to go back to it at any giv­en time, so brands have to be care­ful not to alien­ate and push off the female audi­ence.

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Shaun Stripling, Chief Strategy Officer, Mullen

Smart mar­ket­ing real­ly shouldn’t dif­fer by design, but rather, always be born of real human insight. Or, good old research. The prob­lems arise when mar­keters fail to see their “tar­get” as humans.

Women make or inform 80 per­cent of house­hold pur­chas­es today, their deci­sion-mak­ing process, path to pur­chase, use of prod­ucts, val­ue equa­tion,  bal­ance of ratio­nal and emo­tion­al input are dif­fer­ent from men—and are all things that should be explored from her per­spec­tive. I’m not say­ing that male cre­atives can’t come up with the right solu­tion, but unless they have walked a mile in a woman’s shoes via the product/category, they will typ­i­cal­ly fail.

For exam­ple, we were pitch­ing a sock/hosiery brand and a male cre­ative was insist­ing on an in-store dis­play piece with a fun­ny line about keep­ing your toes cozy after a pedi­cure. Hel­lo? The last thing a woman would do is put on socks after get­ting a pedi­cure.

We don’t all dri­ve mini­vans or Uber our kids to soc­cer prac­tice while wear­ing a twin-set and pearls. Ads tar­get­ing women often feel like they’re based on stereo­types rather than an authen­tic insight. They feel forced or like they’re play­ing to some tra­di­tion­al role women are meant to play, or how oth­ers see her rather than real­ly under­stand­ing how she sees her­self.

Women must be includ­ed on the team (in all areas of the process) and real­ly be heard when some­one objects to the tone or way a woman is por­trayed in an ad. Brands should keep that open dia­log going via social media – a direct con­duit to their actu­al con­sumer that did­n’t even exist a few years ago! I mean, where the hell were the female strate­gists or cre­atives on the recent Bud Light work? Even if they don’t con­sid­er them­selves a “female” brand, guess who’s pick­ing up the gro­ceries most of the time?

Try and infuse some hon­est emo­tion – whether it’s a tear-jerk­er or comedic. And read this loud and clear: We like com­e­dy! Who else is read­ing “Bossy Pants”, “Yes Please”, and “Is Every­body Hang­ing out With­out Me?”  We can laugh at our­selves and will will­ing­ly sup­port brands that help us find the lev­i­ty in life. We love a good cry, too, as long as it’s not based in a guilt dia­logue.

We love:

• The Luvs cam­paign that com­pares first baby to sec­ond, sort of mak­ing fun of mom but based on a real insight that lets her laugh at her­self, you know she’s feel­ing, “Oh yeah, that is SO me!”
• State Farm’s “I’ll nev­er” because it reflects thing we’ve all said or done.
• Sim­i­lac’s Mom­my-wars, because we all try to put our kids first so let’s help each oth­er rather than tear each oth­er down—nice/relevant in the moment mes­sage.
• HelloFlo’s First Moon Par­ty: I beg the world of fem­i­nine hygiene to take a note from this com­pa­ny!
• And a client: Ulta’s #MyBeau­ti­ful­Mom, [which puts] mom on a pedestal with­out pan­der­ing and it’s born of a mon­u­men­tal human insight.

I don’t want to dwell on those who are get­ting it wrong, you can think of the usu­al sus­pects. But I will men­tion Schick, which caused a firestorm of [angry] emails — don’t tell us one more thing that we need to wor­ry about. Enough with the sham­ing!

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Karen Bonna-Rainert, Creative Director, R/GA

I’ve worked on sev­er­al brands that are pri­mar­i­ly focused on Moms. I’m often sur­prised by how brands con­tin­ue to per­pet­u­ate the idea that Mom is respon­si­ble for every­thing that is fam­i­ly-relat­ed: get­ting din­ner on the table in 30 min­utes after work­ing all day, to find­ing the right baby soap, all while keep­ing the house tidy.

While Mom may often be respon­si­ble for a lot of fam­i­ly-relat­ed tasks, she does­n’t have to be sole­ly respon­si­ble for these tasks. When adver­tis­ers posi­tion Mom as the head of all things home-relat­ed, women who don’t want to be sole­ly respon­si­ble for these jobs may be turned off by the mes­sag­ing and think, “That’s not a brand that gets me.”

But, I’m see­ing progress.

Last year, Get­ty launched a new library of images, the Lean In col­lec­tion. It not only fea­tured girls and women doing things they loved doing, but it also fea­tured the amaz­ing peo­ple who sup­port them while doing what they love.

Two images that real­ly stood out to me were the image of a Grand­pa braid­ing a lit­tle girl’s hair and anoth­er of a Dad walk­ing in the house, hold­ing a baby while a dia­per bag slips off his shoul­der. We are used to see­ing Mom as the star of these images, so it real­ly caught the atten­tion of a lot of women when they saw some­thing dif­fer­ent.

Adver­tis­ers can reach out to the mod­ern mom by start­ing to rec­og­nize old-fash­ioned gen­der roles as a thing of the past and show that house­hold jobs can fall to dif­fer­ent fam­i­ly mem­bers, espe­cial­ly Dads. Start mak­ing ads fea­tur­ing Dad select­ing the per­fect chlo­rine-free dia­pers or the best organ­ic chick­en soup for his fam­i­ly. It will grab the atten­tion of Moms every­where, while also send­ing a mes­sage that Mom isn’t, and should­n’t be, the only one capa­ble of mak­ing the floor shine.

I love how Nike speaks to women. Nike rec­og­nizes women as the pow­er­ful, strong, inde­pen­dent indi­vid­u­als they are and shows that work­ing hard – and even get­ting tripped up some­times – can lead to great suc­cess. I’ve always been a suck­er for Nike ads, but they are con­tin­u­al­ly inspir­ing and present women in a very favor­able light.

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Suzy Sammons, Brand Director, 180LA

I have been in the adver­tis­ing agency busi­ness since the late 1980s — large­ly in the auto­mo­tive mar­ket­ing world – so I’ve seen some sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments in brands cre­at­ing tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing to women. Across the board, in the last 50 years, treat­ment of women has improved rel­a­tive to tar­get­ing women.

Auto­mo­tive ads, alas, still have fair­ly stereo­typ­i­cal por­tray­als of women – at every point along the shal­low-female spec­trum. At their best, they do a good job try­ing to tap into mom’s desire for a vehi­cle that’s got safe­ty advance­ments built into it.

In direct female cat­e­gories, the brav­ery and core truths that are ele­vat­ed in the Always “Like a Girl” and the Dove “Real Beau­ty” work are big exam­ples of super sophis­ti­cat­ed and for­ward-think­ing clients.

I’m an ath­lete and in our home we raise ath­letes, so I’m par­tial to the goals and com­pet­i­tive­ness that’s inher­ent in fit­ness con­ver­sa­tions. Ath­let­ic brands have the per­fect offer­ing to tap into the strength of women (which we love). Nike gets women. The brand’s “Inner Thoughts” video is pure truth and inspi­ra­tional expres­sion. Under Armour’s Misty Copeland sto­ry is so pow­er­ful, and address­es the out­side voice of rejec­tion that many of us face.

A brand can par­tic­i­pate in cul­tur­al con­ver­sa­tions as long as they oper­ate from a core truth that is gen­uine­ly reflect­ed in their cor­po­rate purpose…and shows up in their prod­uct offer­ing.

In this dis­cus­sion, do I need to go down the cheap-drool­ing-men route? Does any­one think that Vic­to­ria Secret ads are for women? So con­grat­u­la­tions to Lane Bryant for their Cacique work. And if you’re count­ing YouTube views, be care­ful which audi­ence you count as valu­able.

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Alexandra Fuller, Creative Director, Struck

Mar­keters get lazy when they mar­ket to women. They flat­ten all women into a two-dimen­sion­al stereo­type.

Female audi­ences are incred­i­bly nuanced, yet as cre­atives when we’re giv­en a brief, the tar­get audi­ence may sim­ply read “women” with no con­sid­er­a­tion of all of our unique dri­vers and desires and fears. All female con­sumers are not har­ried, 33-year old moth­ers who are wor­ried about keep­ing the house clean and their skin free of wrin­kles.

Mar­keters seem to think that the only way to con­nect with women is through seri­ous busi­ness: through their heart strings and their wor­ries. Stop being so seri­ous all the time. Give us some smart, self-aware humor, please!

In terms of adver­tis­ing that per­son­al­ly res­onates with me as a woman, a mom, and a CD, there are sev­er­al in the fun­ny cat­e­go­ry: I love VW’s Three Old Wives cam­paign that lam­poons com­mon old wives’ tales about diesel. And Kotex U’s Break the Cycle cam­paign is irrev­er­ent and com­pelling; it takes direct aim at that old two-dimen­sion­al stereo­type. And nei­ther man­ages to foment self-doubt or make fun of capa­ble men.

One of the biggest imped­i­ments to more nuanced women-focused adver­tis­ing is the lack of nuanced cre­ative teams. I don’t mean to imply that men can’t suc­cess­ful­ly mar­ket to women, but the lack of diver­si­ty of all kinds among mar­keters is clear­ly prob­lem­at­ic in cre­at­ing robust, empa­thet­ic brand work that res­onates with female audi­ences. Even as we work to bring more diver­si­ty into cre­ative lead­er­ship, all mar­keters can cul­ti­vate a more female cre­ative per­spec­tive in order to bet­ter con­nect with their diverse audi­ences.

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Monique Nelson, CEO of Uniworld Group

Women and men are dif­fer­ent and what acti­vates them is dif­fer­ent. For women, it’s much more emo­tion­al­ly dri­ven. They get the facts first and try to assess if it’s a brand they respond to. Men are much more fact- and data-dri­ven and are far less emo­tion­al.

There is a dif­fer­ence in terms of how you talk to each and you have to be care­ful because you can pan­der to both. Women tend to be stereo­typ­i­cal­ly labeled eas­i­ly and quick­ly, so you always want to make sure it is insight-dri­ven and how a use case ben­e­fits the per­son you’re talk­ing to.

I see things for moms that are very spe­cif­ic, tar­get­ing young moms or moms with a sec­ond child. Hug­gies and Pam­pers do a tremen­dous job of mak­ing feel­ing com­fort­able and safe­ty of the prod­uct is key, so you want to make sure you’re not talk­ing to any woman, you’re talk­ing to mom.

When it comes to cere­als and food prod­ucts, women are mak­ing 85 per­cent of these deci­sions, so you want to make sure you’re using the right cues, like safe­ty – is it FDA approved? Women are thought­ful about mak­ing sure their fam­i­ly is safe, so those trig­gers are thought­ful.

The brand should always come into account. We pride our­selves on mak­ing sure we match soul of the brand with the soul of the con­sumer. The two of them need to com­ple­ment each oth­er. If the per­son is not inter­est­ed in what the brand has to offer, you’re prob­a­bly not going to make a good con­nec­tion. If it’s a use case, that’s what you want to make sure you find. It can change based on the cat­e­go­ry – mobile phones ver­sus cars ver­sus the Marines – those are dif­fer­ent types of peo­ple and women in par­tic­u­lar that you would talk to dif­fer­ent­ly at a dif­fer­ent stage. You have to real­ize there are dif­fer­ent trig­gers.

You have to talk to women. Most of the time, if you’re screw­ing up, it’s because you haven’t talked to them. And that’s where, again, there’s so much data out there. Peo­ple get over­whelmed with how to use it.

It’s about talk­ing to women and being thought­ful. I don’t know if you remem­ber, but cuphold­ers in cars now is because of women. One is not enough because there are kids in the back and they need two in front…those are the types of insights to be thought­ful about.

Hard­er areas are in fash­ion and cos­met­ics. Dove does an amaz­ing job in terms of find­ing beau­ty in all women, but the prob­lem still is a lot of the rub is in how women are por­trayed and the issue around image and whether rep­re­sen­ta­tions are prop­er. You’ve seen what hap­pened in Paris in which they have elim­i­nat­ed ema­ci­at­ed mod­els so young girls don’t aspire to it, but it’s hard in cos­met­ics, beau­ty and fash­ion when it’s about the best por­tray­al of that and it con­stant­ly will be some­thing we strug­gle with.

There are times when every­one wants to feel pret­ty and beau­ti­ful and we should feel pret­ty and beau­ti­ful, so I think that will be a hard area and we will con­tin­ue to evolve and talk about what makes the most sense. I applaud the Nikes and the Doves and think we need more bal­ance, so women know this is just a seg­ment and not for every­one.

A lot of mom brands do a good job. [So do] Dove, Nike and Under Armour with the Misty Copeland ads…so, again, your body is your tem­ple and, again, I can’t leave out the fash­ion brands. Cov­er Girl is doing a great job with diver­si­ty of women…multi-ethnic, size and shape and every woman is beau­ti­ful. So, too, with Lane Bryant and the I’m no Angel cam­paign.

I think if your tar­get is women…and if you’re not con­nect­ing with women, it’s prob­a­bly because you don’t have a strong assess­ment of how women inter­act with your brand.

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Kristin Kovner, President, K‑Squared Strategies

Many mar­keters still take a “shrink it and pink it” approach to mar­ket­ing to women, which doesn’t work. It’s inau­then­tic and treats women as a mono­lith­ic group, with mes­sag­ing that’s often patron­iz­ing. (Think of recent efforts by nine MLB teams to attract women to games with feath­er boas and wine at spe­cial “Ladies’ Nights,” even though reports show some 143 mil­lion women attend­ed MLB games last year — more than did NFL, NBA and NHL games com­bined.)

Today’s best mar­keters treat women as they are — a large audi­ence that rep­re­sents many sub-seg­ments and expe­ri­ences. Mar­keters must con­sid­er age and life stage, as well, when try­ing to reach women. After all, in many ways, and for many prod­uct cat­e­gories, teenage and mil­len­ni­al women may have more in com­mon with their male coun­ter­parts (e.g., a desire for self-expres­sion, authen­tic­i­ty, and co-cre­ation with brands) than they do with sig­nif­i­cant­ly old­er females. And new moth­ers of any age share more expe­ri­ences than than they do with their sin­gle coun­ter­parts, be they 20 or 45.  So it can’t just be a gen­der view or a lifestyle view; it must be a com­bi­na­tion of many ele­ments to be effec­tive.

That’s why I par­tic­u­lar­ly I like the Always #LikeA­Girl cam­paigns. They did a beau­ti­ful job con­nect­ing with women of all ages and expe­ri­ences by shin­ing a light on the per­va­sive, often neg­a­tive, one-size-fits-all mes­sag­ing pre­sent­ed to and about women. By tran­scend­ing these neg­a­tive images, Always remind­ed women that being part of this expan­sive, var­ied group is some­thing to be cel­e­brat­ed.

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Denise Blasevick, CEO, the S3 Agency

A female-spe­cif­ic prod­uct is, by default, mar­ket­ed dif­fer­ent­ly – either direct­ly to women, in a way that cap­tures the usage trig­ger, or to men who might buy it for a woman, in a way that makes them feel they are help­ing in some way. A prod­uct that applies equal­ly to men and women may do so in a psy­cho­graph­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar way that needs no dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion – and, in fact, some­times women don’t want to feel they are being “called out” as dif­fer­ent from men in a sce­nario like this.

When brands talk down to women or act as if they are in a wom­an’s pri­vate cir­cle of friends, it comes across as disin­gen­u­ous and that’s an enor­mous turn-off. Rec­og­niz­ing that a brand is not actu­al­ly a wom­an’s friend (or any­one’s friend) but, rather, can ful­fill a pur­pose in a wom­an’s life will yield insights in how to best reach that tar­get mar­ket.

Women are busy – we want to know the ben­e­fits right up front, don’t make us dig to fig­ure it out. We won’t do it. The sec­ond we start feel­ing frus­trat­ed, we’re on to some­thing else.

Star­bucks is great at mar­ket­ing to every­one, includ­ing women – yet you don’t hear about their “mar­ket­ing to women” cam­paigns. That’s because they inte­grate that vision into their brand essence in a way that makes women want to go there. The envi­ron­ment feels safe. Vari­eties are suf­fi­cient to allow women to express their indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. Qual­i­ty is con­sis­tent, and if some­thing is made wrong, women feel wel­come to ask to have it cor­rect­ed. And the brand is con­stant­ly intro­duc­ing lit­tle things that sur­prise and delight, such as the new Frap­puc­ci­no Cook­ies that you can see women shar­ing pic­tures of on social net­works.

GoDad­dy is known for their com­mer­cials that women hate, but they don’t seem to care. Obnox­ious­ness is part of their brand, how­ev­er, and I’d be hard pressed to say that peo­ple use the site because of these over-the-top spots with super sexy women. The web­site expe­ri­ence isn’t in your face the way their TV spots are, how­ev­er, so for women who can get past that, the site still rep­re­sents a viable solu­tion.

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Kristian May Stewart, SVP Strategy, Analytics & Research, Commonground/MGS

Get per­son­al with her. Today’s mod­ern, Mil­len­ni­al woman places a high val­ue on rela­tion­ships and brands should take advan­tage of that by cre­at­ing con­tent plat­forms and sto­ries that build con­nec­tions, are inter­ac­tive, and yield an expe­ri­ence that cre­ates a per­son­al attach­ment for her.

Rec­og­nize their diver­si­ty. Can a brand cap­ture and win with women with­out dri­ving deep and rec­og­niz­ing that women are not a homoge­nous group? I don’t think so. Today’s woman plays many dif­fer­ent roles, she is flu­id and the group is diverse. Brands must take the time to get to define and know who their woman tar­get is to best con­nect and engage her, for how you win with a Proac­tive Woman who is also a Mom will be dif­fer­ent from win­ning with a Savvy Sin­gle Woman.

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What’s your take on how brands speak to women?