Catfight

I wrote an editorial soon after starting here at Furniture/Today denigrating our industry’s use of the “she” term. I just didn’t understand why we always had to say we were catering to “her” needs.Seemed a little sexist.

I said it was pretentious for furniture companies to throw around how it was working hard for “her” and “her” dollar. I’ve reconsidered that editorial quite a bit since then.

It’s good medicine for our industry to recognize who it works for.

Recently I attended a discussion where the panelists spoke about marketing to women. One of the panelists was a woman with a public relations firm who discussed how a certain beer maker wanted to market better to women.

She related that marketing more to men had helped lose beer makers an audience. One example the panelist gave was a commercial that advertised beer with a catfight - a fight between two females.

While random X guy might get a healthy chuckle out of this, for females, she said, this kind of closes the door on the whole beer experience to you. The target audience for this commercial is definitely men.

Beer advertising hadn’t invited women to share in the “beer experience” - a kind of free association we all make when we picture beer and our evening with it.

Then panelist said showed the associations women make with wine. Let me tell you - there about a hundred more positive associations women make toward their wine experience than their beer experience.

They think about curling up with a glass, romance, unwinding, candles, femininity and just a whole slew of other things that if you were marketing toward women you’d want people to associate with you.

A positive experience.

I don’t know that this is an apples to apples comparison, but I wonder what we’d get if we asked a panel full of women to free associate their furniture buying experience.