Her Voice Blog

We’re definitely in the thick of the holiday shopping season, what with Black Friday and its newer counterpart, Cyber Monday having passed by a few weeks ago. No matter, it’s not too late to identify and reach consumers to boost those holiday sales. Thanks to a Retail Shopper Segmentation System by Experian Simmons, businesses can be more aware of who is shopping and therefore strategize on how to reach them. The market research finds shoppers to fall into the following 6 segments:

The above quote is from a great book by Brian Solis & Deirdre Breakenridge called Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR. It's definitely something to consider as social media continues to permeate many aspects of our society. If virtually everything we do online is visible to somebody, how do the choices we make affect our image, both in the digital world and "in real life?" Things to ponder!

With all the daily routines that keep us busy, it’s not often that we stop and think about why certain things are the way that they are. We accept certain truths about ourselves as fact, without taking the time to understand why they are such. Did you know that psychological research actually refers back to our very beginnings in developing many of its tenets? In other words, cave men days. This blog has already stated several things about the importance women place on relationships and feeling connected. According to “stone-age survival theory,” if women lost their husbands, they turned to other female members of the group for support and assistance. For women, according to marketing guru Bridget Brennan in Why She Buys, “preserving relationships was a matter of life and death” and [sustaining the friendships] “is still one of women’s greatest needs.”

Welcome to the HER VOICE community! As the official blog of FletcherPR, we'll be sharing our views on marketing to women and girls, as well as PR and marketing tactics we believe in. We're also harnessing girl-power with our "She's So Empowered" profiles, and celebrating victories--large and small-- in "Something to Sing About."

One of the first things that we learn in public relations and marketing is that it's all about your audience. Tailoring witty messages, pulling off elegant events and producing slick advertisements will only get you so far if they don't reach the ones they are intended for. Before you can reach any audience, you must first identify it...including understanding its make-up, segments and demographics.

These days our lives are inundated with buzzwords like "social media" "social networking" "blogosphere," but what does all of this stuff really have to do with you? If you represent a company selling a product to consumers, specifically women, these phrases have quite a lot to do with you and your bottom line.

Lash was the word this summer at Medi-Spa Knoxville when the dermatological day spa hosted a groovy 70's go-go party where women were invited to "get their lash on!" Since research has proven that consumers are more likely to try and purchase new products in a social group setting, this was a great way for the day spa to unveil some of its great offerings. Medi-Spa staff was on hand to offer party-goers a chance to try out a complimentary eye treatment with the new Clarisonic (R) Opal Sonic Infuser. This process attacks those fine lines and wrinkles with a combination of sonic micromassage and an anti-aging serum. After years of being told to "smile pretty," who wouldn't want to erase a few of those tiny lines all that smiling left behind?

What do Mr. Clean, the Energizer Bunny and Mrs. Butterworth have in common? It's more than the fact that they are iconic American brands. The reason that these brands are considered icons is the way they've been woven into the experience of America. According to a couple of recent studies (one published in the Journal of Marketing), this type of staying power is in part thanks to the way that these companies have anthropomorphized their brands. One study found that the brands which assign human characteristics to nonhuman products may appeal more to female consumers than male consumers (Wang, Baker, and Wakefield 2007). It's no coincidence that female consumers are the main ones making purchasing decisions regarding cleaning supplies, groceries and other household items.

One example of this can be seen in our recent "Love the Penis, Kill the Sperm" campaign for Conceptrol, a vaginal contraceptive gel from Revive Personal Products. Once viewed as something outdated that "your grandma might have used," spermicide has now come into the forefront of birth control methods. One of the most effective contraceptives you can buy without a prescription, Conceptrolis free of hormones and can be used alone or in conjuction with condoms.