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ook Summary: EVEolution The Eight Truths of Marketing toWomenPrinted with permission fromTCI Management Consultants. A group of senior-levelmanagement consultants, offering strategic planning and marketing services to a wide range of

public and private sector clients.

EVEolution The Eight Truths of Marketing to Womenby FaithPopcorn and Lys MarigoldHyperion, New York, 2000ISBN 0-7868-6523-7.EVEolution is all about marketing to women. From abusiness perspective, the logic behind the book is quitesimple and compelling: Women are different and they havemoney. So what do I do? (p. 8)Popcorn and Marigold are the team behind The PopcornReport and Clicking, both best-sellers about trends insociety, and how savvy marketers and businesses can takeadvantage of them. They brought such terms as cocooning,cashing out and down-aging into common parlance, andhave sold many a book in the process. Their company,BrainReserve, founded in 1974, they describe as a trendsbasedmarketing consultancy; it is reachable on the web ateither FaithPopcorn.com or BrainReserve.com.Popcorn and Marigold turn their attention here to the considerable purchasingpower wielded by women in the USA. According to them:

women influence the purchase of over 80% of consumer goods they influence 80% of health-care decisions they buy 50% of all automobiles sold, and play a role in influencing thepurchase of 30% more 40% of households with assets of more that $600,000 are headed by women they start new businesses at twice the rate of men (!) female owned and female-run businesses generate $3.6 trillion annually, andemploy27.5 million peopleThe authors arent too specific about where these figures come from, but there is

little doubt that the distaff side of society is a significant target market. Havingestablished this, they then proceed to articulate 8 truths about marketing towomen. These are:1. Connecting your female consumers to one another connects them to yourbrand: Some successful brands have appealed to women by facilitating theirinteraction with one another, and thus sealing their loyalty to the brand, as themedium that brought them together. Examples cited include Saturns gettogethers, Weight Watchers, and Rosie ODonnells Chub Club.2. If youre marketing to one of her lives youre missing all the others: Whyis this important to marketing? Because women lead multi-lives, and amarketer, concentrating on only one of them, will miss out on all the others.

The answer is to help women integrate their lives more seamlessly. (p. 42)An interesting (and perhaps counterintuitive, given the companys

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stereotypical male orientation) example of this is Merrill Lynchs AlternativeWork Arrangements Group for female employees.3. If she has to ask, its too late: Here the authors introduce the concept of

Anticipatory Marketing the idea that to truly win the loyalty of womencustomers, a company must anticipate her needs, and provide them in advance

of her having to ask. Women are much more likely to switch than complain,hence, if you wait for her to ask for new products or services, its already toolate.4. Market to her peripheral vision and she will see you in a whole new light:Women, whose brains are less dominated by the neurotransmitter dopaminethan males, are correspondingly less prone to act impulsively, and thus areless persuaded by the loud clamour of much modern advertising. Rather,according to Popcorn and Marigold, women are much more likely to notice allthe subtle surrounding features that comprise a message (including soundlevels, colours, smells, images, service touches, etc.), and may seem to ignore ortune out the main message (which of course, is all that men see). The authorsrefer to this as Peripheral Marketing and suggest that all of these types of

messages are important when a woman decides whether or not she likes abrand.5. Walk, run, go to her, secure her loyalty forever: In other words, you go toher, she doesnt come to you. Making it ultra-easy for women to obtain aproduct or service (in these days where time is such a valuable and limitedcommodity) will pay off in terms of brand loyalty. One example cited isStreamline.com, a grocery home-delivery service, and there are several others.6. This generation of women consumers will lead you to the next: Here, theauthors introduce the concept of brand me-down the notion that motherswill pass on to daughters an identification or affinity with particular brands of

products or services. Because of the special mother-daughter relationship,marketers can develop the next generation of consumers by providingopportunities for mothers to bond with their daughters.7. Co-parenting is the best way to raise a brand: why dont marketersrecognize that parenting is part of our basic make-up, and leverage thatpart of us? Thats what Im suggesting that women would want to join abrand that they themselves help bring into the world. I believe thatmarketers must invite their female consumers into the delivery room to beco-parent at the birth of the brand. And then encourage these femaleconsumers to stay around and help raise the brand to healthy maturity.(pp. 176,177) The Zagats restaurant guides (which publishes ratings byvolunteers) is offered as an example of this idea of co-parenting (75% of

Zagats raters are women). Another example is the development of GEFinancial Services, and their development of services specifically orientedtowards women owners of business. In both cases, women were involvedearly in on the actual development and evolution of the business concept.8. Everything mattersyou cant hide behind your logo: The final truthrelates to the fact that women (unlike men) notice everything, and everythingcontributes to their image of the brand. Each aspect of the product or serviceoriented towards the female customer should be consistent and mutuallyreinforcing of a positive image. Popcorn and Marigold introduce idea here ofa fifth P added to the traditional 4 Ps of marketing (product, price,promotion and place). This fifth P is Policy, which governs all aspects of acompanys operation from hiring practices to charitable activities to itsposition on child labour and the ethical treatment of animals. To women, it all

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matters, and adds up to w2hether or not they feel an affinity towards thecompany and are going to use its products or services.The book ends with the authors giving a detailed case study of Revlon Inc. acompany that is in deep trouble nowadays. They show how the company couldbe substantially turned around through adherence to the eight principles of

EVEolution. It makes for very interesting speculation. Revlon should take notice.Written in the breezy FaithPopcorn style, EVEolution is an easy read, and is fullof insight and humour. Notwithstanding this, the basic message is sober:companies that want to tap into the highly lucrative womens market mustEVEolve. Companies that fail to do this will be just like species that dont evolveto adapt to their environment: they go extinct.