By Tricia Cornell for Exponent PR
Women make 85 percent of purchasing decisions.
Ninety-one percent of women say marketers just don’t get them.
Three percent of creative directors in the U.S. ad industry are women.
Suddenly, it all adds up.
Kat Gordon, who has 20 years of experience as a copywriter and creative director, did the math herself. That’s why she started the 3% Conference to, in her words,
“[teach] men and women in agencies and on the client side how to address these issues in new ways and offers something that has been sorely lacking for female creatives: a sense of community.”
To put it in the crystal-clear words of two of my colleagues who attended the 3 Percent Conference and shared what they learned with the rest of us: Misunderstanding women is creative and costly. We’ve got to break the closed loop of white guys talking to white guys about white guys.
(We’ve got amazing women at the top at Exponent PR and our sister agency, Colle+McVoy, but we’ll admit we’ve got some way to go before we hit parity among top creatives.)
Why is it costly to misunderstand women? Not just because they are the ones who make purchasing decisions, but also because marketers want to be where the customers are. Where are customers these days? On social media. And, on social media, women are the one sharing and doing.
The future of advertising is gender equal, according to speakers at the conference, because it has to be. Making sure women — and underrepresented minorities and people with diverse life experiences — are in the room is a cornerstone of building empathy.
And empathy is a cornerstone of modern marketing efforts.
“Using empathy to drive marketing means putting ourselves into the shoes of the person using your product — and walking a mile or two. What's important to them? What worries them? What hurdles do they face? What language do they use? How do we enrich their lives?”
When we can boost the number of women in creative leadership well beyond 3 percent (and make similar headway with other underrepresented groups), we will have a deeper array of experiences to draw on as we ask ourselves those key empathetic questions — building better pitches, better campaigns and better connections with people.