APG Noisy Thinking 2014

Our 3rd event of 2014 in association with Flamingo takes place on the 20th May at Google.  We've recently reflected on what makes a good insight or creative brief. Now we're turning our attention to targeting ads and content; in this case to the biggest global emerging market; women.

 

Women control up to $12 trillion of the $18.4 global consumer spend.  Yet according to Jane Cunningham of Inside her Pretty Little Head, 70% of women claim to find advertising irrelevant.  And as Rachel Pashley - author of Female Tribes - would contend, a large proportion of the marketing and advertising community are still stuck in the 1950's defining a woman according to whether she's embraced motherhood yet.  And when she has, with only 19% of mothers saying that they relate to any mothers portrayed in advertising and only 23% happy with people other than their famiy calling them Mum, isn't it high time that we ditched the 'Mum' word from marketing altogether? At least that's the finding of brand new work from Saatchi and Saatchi.

 

How can this be when so many women work in our profession and women are such a crucial market?  Why do we persist in defining women in terms of their responsibilities rather than their achievements? There is the odd notable exception of course.  Dove Sketches seems to have pressed all the right buttons in the right way.  So what can we learn from Dove to apply to the myriad of other brands and businesses targeting women?

 

We've assembled a brilliant team to shine a light in this worryingly murky area:

 

Jane Cunningham | founder of Inside Her Pretty Little Head

 

Kate Smither | Global Planning Partner on Dove Sketches

 

Rachel Pashley | JWT who pioneered and brought to fruition a major new segmentation of women called Female Tribes

 

Richard Huntington | CSO of Saatchi and Saatchi who has just published a devastating report on how the idea of 'Mum' should be excised from the marketing and comms landscape.