Blog Archives
Why women are easy and size matters for men
In the categories labelled “Gross Generalisations” and “Blindingly Obvious” I present to you, dear reader, proof of what you may have suspected all along: men and women are very different, and women crack sooner under the advertiser’s spell.
A study by comScore of 292 television ad copy tests shows that women are more likely to develop a preference for an advertised brand than men. In fact, women’s share of choice rose 5.2% points after exposure to TV ads, compared to just 4% points for men.
But even more interesting are the ways that different types of advertising prompts affect men and women. Women respond more favourably to factual ads with product research information, lots of (4 or more) brand mentions, and product demonstrations, especially the age-old “problem/solution” ad format so beloved of household products companies like P&G.
No surprise, to me at least, that only the ads featuring superiority claims had a greater persuasive effect on men than on women. A cursory glance at almost any car, sports or technology ad will help confirm this to be true.
Further reading:
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comScore Data Mine blog: Men and Women Respond Differently To Various Types of Creative Ad Elements
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comScore Data Mine blog: Men More Difficult to Persuade with Advertising than Women
News Flash: our news habits are changing
Gosh, these data bring things into sharp focus! We all know that our information discovery and consumption habits are going through some pretty seismic changes, but new data from the Pew Research Center in the US show how rapidly this change has come about.
In 2010, the Internet surpassed TV as the main source of news information for 18-29 year olds in the US, while 48% of 30-49 year olds also cited the Internet as one of their two main news sources. The use of newspapers remains in decline across most age categories, while radio seems to be holding its own, albeit at a low point of between 13-19%.
[click graphs to enlarge]
There’s a whole generation of consumers who have recently or are about to enter the workforce whose news consumption behaviours differ wildly to every generation that has gone before. Over the coming years, as these consumers grow older and become the group with the highest disposable income, the way news and information are discovered and shared will undergo further transformations. The challenge for marketers and anyone in the content creation business is huge. These data provide us with a compelling and undeniable truth: the future’s digital.
