I am getting tired of commercials that show women falling madly in love with cleaning products.
I was in Target yesterday, and I didn’t see one woman dancing with a mop or celebrating over a new dish washing cleanser. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that happen in any department store I’ve ever frequented.
My question to advertisers is: What type of female target market are you talking to before creating these ads?
A sub-question is: Do your focus groups include females at all?
Remember the commercial where a woman buys her 60-ish mother a washer and dryer for Christmas? The mother is SO excited over this gift she starts smearing and spilling food on people just so she can remove their stained clothing and use her new washing machine.
How many females do you know who are so stimulated by the thought of a new washing machine that they create additional dirty laundry . . . voluntarily? I don’t know about you, but unless this machine does the laundry for me, I’m not so excited about it.
Start watching commercials closely, and see how many of them seem to have been created in the 50’s. We might be without the strand of pearls, but the message is the same.
I remember watching the Swiffer commercials where women “break-up” with their mops to go with the new, dashing Swiffer mop. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a personal relationship with my mop. And my idea of a hot date does not include the word Swiffer.
I wonder if marketing groups are too cheap to conduct new focus groups so they’re using old television shows to determine their advertising strategies. Maybe they’re watching old episodes of Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver.
Thanks to Stephanie Holland of She-conomy I’m finally starting to understand why women are portrayed as great lovers of all cleaning products. She says:
85% of all Brand purchases are made by women. Incredibly, only 3% of advertising agency creative directors are women.
Aha! That’s why the guys on commercials are out drinking beer and watching football while we’re dancing with our vacuum cleaners. Tell me that doesn’t suck.
One more thing from She-conomy:
Women age 50+control net worth of $19 trillion and own more than three-fourths of the nation’s financial wealth
You’d think that kind of purchasing power would get us out of the kitchen.
Today I will spend twelve hours working, an hour on the phone with family and two hours in my car going to meetings. I’ve carved out absolutely no time for mop-dancing.