Recent­ly, Momen­tol­ogy explored exact­ly how not to mar­ket to women, with tone-deaf brands show­ing the dan­gers of not lis­ten­ing to what female con­sumers expect, val­ue, and want to see in a brand’s adver­tis­ing and cam­paigns. So what should brands be doing to get it right? A recent sur­vey reveals that brands mar­ket­ing to women should focus on virtues of care-giv­ing, intel­li­gence, and strength – not sta­tus or aspi­ra­tion.

With build­ing pres­sure urg­ing brands and media pub­lish­ers to mod­ern­ize their iden­ti­ty and over­all mes­sag­ing to pro­mote gen­der equal­i­ty, brands often find them­selves strug­gling to pro­duce con­tent that women actu­al­ly appre­ci­ate.

In many cas­es, mis­placed sen­ti­ments can alien­ate con­sumers. In the fash­ion indus­try, for exam­ple, up to 47 per­cent of women feel a brand’s mar­ket­ing makes them feel exclud­ed, some­thing that led Mod­Cloth founder and CEO, Susan Gregg Koger, to write an open let­ter in a bid to change the way the fash­ion indus­try mar­ket­ed itself to women.

There is an increas­ing expec­ta­tion among con­sumers for brands to com­mu­ni­cate and mar­ket not only respon­si­bly, but in a way that is tuned-in and res­onates with con­sumers. Any­thing less can result in back­lash, and poten­tial­ly, the loss of brand equi­ty.

Vic­to­ri­a’s Secret know this only too well. Ear­li­er this year, a cam­paign the brand ran to pro­mote their new line of ‘Body’ lin­gerie, using super-slim mod­els and the tagline “The Per­fect Body”, was met with a peti­tion of 16,000 UK sig­na­tures ask­ing the the fash­ion brand to apol­o­gize for the “irre­spon­si­ble,” “body sham­ing” ad.

Today, espe­cial­ly for brands and mar­ket­ing cam­paigns that tar­get women, there is a need to move away from unhealthy mes­sages that play on inse­cu­ri­ties and unre­al­is­tic aspi­ra­tions, not just because it’s eth­i­cal, but because con­sumers expect a rich­er emo­tion­al con­text from brands, and will invari­ably become increas­ing­ly loy­al to the ones who under­stand their needs.

So what do women want to see from brands today? New research from Brand Repub­lic, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with research com­pa­ny 2CV, revealed some cru­cial insights about how brands should approach mar­ket­ing for female audi­ences.

1. Extol The Intelligence Of Women

The old schools of mar­ket­ing often mar­ket­ed prod­ucts by play­ing on con­cepts of sta­tus or aspi­ra­tion, even when that aspi­ra­tion was unre­al­is­tic and unachiev­able (as has long been true in fash­ion mar­ket­ing). These are tired, and often irri­tat­ing, con­cepts for today’s female con­sumers.

Instead, intel­li­gence is the key female virtue brands should embrace in their mar­ket­ing mes­sages, accord­ing to the study. Women are becom­ing less tol­er­ant of patron­iz­ing, out­dat­ed arche­types brands use in their mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing. Smart brands will extol the zeit­geist of con­fi­dent, mod­ern fem­i­nin­i­ty that has become a new stan­dard for aspi­ra­tion among women today.

Men agree the out­dat­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women needs to change. Brand Repub­lic’s sur­vey found that men believed that “the por­tray­al of women in media and adver­tis­ing is too sex­u­al­ized and height­ens pres­sure to be ‘per­fect’.”

Oth­er stats from Brand Repub­lic and 2CV’s study:

• 84 per­cent of women agree that the media puts pres­sure on women to be “per­fect.”
• 80 per­cent of women think the media and adver­tis­ing sets unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tions of the per­fect woman.
• 73 per­cent of respon­dents thing women are over­ly sex­u­al­ized in media and adver­tis­ing.
• 56 per­cent of women think wom­en’s roles are dumb­ed down in the media.
• 22 per­cent of men and women believe women por­trayed in adver­tis­ing is an accu­rate reflec­tion of women today.

2. Avoid Using Outdated Archetypes For Women

It’s some­thing adver­tis­ers have been guilty of for a long time. Women are pigeon­holed into sim­plis­tic arche­types: “matri­archs”, “seduc­tress­es”, “inno­cents”, but rarely, if ever a com­plex aspi­ra­tion char­ac­ter that can be a role mod­el to young girls, but also exists as a self-con­fi­dent, mod­ern woman.

Women want to see brand’s build­ing mar­ket­ing philoso­phies around fem­i­nine virtues of care-giv­ing, intel­li­gence and strength.

To give a few real life exam­ples, the 2CV research found that women iden­ti­fied most with Cami­la Bat­manghe­lid­jh, founder of Kids Com­pa­ny, which helps 17,000 under­priv­i­leged kids in Lon­don (who they admired for her car­ing virtue), TV pre­sen­ter Clare Bald­ing (intel­li­gent, pro­gres­sive, ground­break­ing), and Kylie Minogue (strong, resilient, over­com­ing adver­si­ty). Such a study indi­cates that a pro­found change will be nec­es­sary in the way brands are read­ing their female audi­ences.

3. Build Campaigns Based On Truth, Empathy

Brands today should­n’t push a self-invent­ed set of val­ues that they project onto their con­sumers. They need to act, think, and feel with their con­sumers, mould­ing them­selves to bet­ter sup­port those who enable their suc­cess­ful exis­tence.

Super­mar­kets like Lidl and ALDI pro­vide a great exam­ple of these prin­ci­ples in action. Rather than pan­der­ing to the indus­try by stock­ing a vast amount of com­pet­ing prod­ucts and brands, they sim­ply stock the best val­ue prod­ucts to enhance the shop­ping expe­ri­ence of their cus­tomers.

For brands that are mar­ket­ing to women, the les­son here is to flat­ter and pro­mote female intel­li­gence, not aspi­ra­tions.

Responsible Media And Authenticity

One of the brands lead­ing the way in an up-to-date and fresh way is Dove. Per­haps you remem­ber the Real Beau­ty Sketch­es video, which sought to chal­lenge the way the media under­mined wom­en’s self-esteem.

The brand have con­tin­ued to build on these val­ues, and spon­sor a num­ber of ini­tia­tives that raise aware­ness and edu­ca­tion about have female body image and self-esteem. The Dove Self-Esteem Project for exam­ple enables a com­mu­ni­ty of teach­ers to speed their mes­sage among young girls.

In many ways these ini­tia­tives rep­re­sent the huge chasm between the way brands sought to uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly mar­ket to con­sumers in the past, to the way they com­mu­ni­cate, engage, and sup­port con­sumers and com­mu­ni­ties today. Female con­sumers have moved on. It will be up to the brands to prove they can adapt and meet the new expec­ta­tions and require­ments of women.

You can down­load Brand Repub­lic’s full report here.