Why You Need Women On Your Creative Team

Posted on | April 6, 2009 |

By Holy Buchanan
Ok, it’s a stat that’s been beaten to death, but women make or influence 80% of all purchases.

Here’s why I’m trotting it out one more time – women are the majority of purchasers of most products, so your advertising needs to resonate with them. One of the top reasons why advertising to women fails is that marketers are targeting stereotypes. But the other reason their efforts fail is that they do not have enough of the target market (women) making creative decisions.

Case in point – I recently read an interview with Ruth Lee, Chief Creative Officer for DDB, who was recently named one of the Top Ten Creative Directors in China.

Ruth discussed her experience as a judge in a prestigious awards show.

“I remember when I was judging another awards show and I came across a print idea for Panadol, which was promoting a formula to cure menstrual pain. The visual was a bomb disposal robot holding the product approaching a house, with policemen cowering nervously behind their cars in the background. I didn’t get this at first. But then some guys on my panel explained that on days when women face this problem, they really are like a ticking bomb, hence the bomb disposal robot delivering the product. As a member of the ad’s target audience, I think this ad only really works from a guy’s perspective, and I think it’s quite intimidating. But hey, it won a Cannes Lion.”

Ok – just so we’re clear – the target audience didn’t even get the ad, but it won a Cannes Lion. Wow.

I would love to know what criteria judges use to determine which ad wins. But I suspect many ads will be judged on whether the judges “like” them or not. Unfortunately, I still see this too often in creative shops. Creative directors go with what their gut tells them, what they like.

Which brings me back to my original point. This is why you MUST have women on your creative team.

Mary Dean at KickSkirt.com has this to say:

“Only 3% of the Creative Directors in ad agencies are women. 2 of them are right here.
At most agencies, men are the creative directors in charge of deciding what kind of advertising will appeal to women. Now, we love men as much as the next gal does, but over the past twenty years, we’ve noticed that this system doesn’t work very well. We figure that if women are making 90% of all consumer purchase decisions, then women should write the words and conjure the images that are intended to influence those purchase decisions. It seems to work.”

So get some women to lead your team. And remember, with the direct access marketers now have to their target audience on the Internet, there’s simply no excuse for not creating commercials women love.

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