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Women Selling Men. How is it that women end up in charge of marketing "male" brands like ESPN, Mercedes-Benz and Gillette blades and razors? "A man or a woman can come up with a great product, says Mary Lou Quinlan, author of Just Ask A Woman, as quoted by Theresa Howard in USA Today. "It's getting at the emotional underpinnings and women are great at that. Men," she continues, "are reluctant to share their deepest emotions to men, but they will spill their guts to a good-listening woman." Lee Ann Daly, chief marketer of ESPN, the sports network, meanwhile comments: "I'm very interested in marketing to men, because it's one of the more difficult things to figure out. Men are asked from the time they're born to the time they're 14 to be tough. Then when they're 14, they're asked to be sensitive. It's important to recognize the mixed messages men have."
Sometimes such recognition is helped along by growing up with it. For example, Michelle Cervantez, "the first woman to be vice president of marketing for Mercedes-Benz USA," grew up working at her mom and dad's gas station: "I cleaned parts and washed vehicles and was a bit of a grease monkey," she says. "A lot of cool cars would hang out at my dad's gas station." Other women marketing to men include Allison Johnson, who is Hewlett Packard's svp of global brand communications, Mary Ann Pesce, president of the personal care, global business unit at Gillette, Jacqueline Parkes, svp of marketing and advertising for Major League Baseball, Kim Kosak, general director for advertising and sales promotion at Chevrolet, and Joanne Bischmann, vice president of marketing for, yes, Harley-Davidson.
With research showing that women influence 85 percent of purchases ... including men's products," chief marketers like Julie Roehm of Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep fame notes the importance of crafting a "message that speaks to both men and women." She comments: "If you're speaking directly to the man," she says, "it still has to make sense for the woman. It makes a difference in what we do." The importance of that difference is perhaps reflected in the overall rising numbers of women marketers: "In 1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women made up 22 percent of managers in marketing, advertising and public relations; in 2002, 38 percent." It is not necessarily shown up in their paychecks, though, as "female ad executives still earn 10 percent to 25 percent less than male counterparts," according to various studies. Chevy's Kim Kosak, however sees a bright future ahead: "People are put into positions who earn it. I don't see token women put into these jobs. Not here."
Coke's Broadway Spectacular. "Piece by piece, at 47th Street and Broadway, the Coca-Cola Company is erecting a 30-ton, $6.5 million advertising sign," reports Glenn Collins in The New York Times. Coke says it is "the world's most technically advanced billboard" -- and it sure sounds like it. The new sign incorporates 80,000 feet of wiring and uses 196 power supplies, each one controlling a yard-wide section of the sign. Six video processors create images with a total processing power that is twice that of an ordinary flat-panel, high-resolution computer monitor ... The sign is actually two dozen bolted-together, sculpturally shaped jumbo screens studded with 2,646,336 light-emitting diodes," that are concentrated into clusters of red, green and blue to create some 882,112 "pixels."
Yep, it will show up at high-noon -- and Coke hopes it will outshine all the other signs in Times Square. However, Coke does not expect to achieve its intended effect by sheer wattage alone. A multimedia company called the Wow Factor, www.wowfactor.net, has created an abundance of content -- a total 100 different display designs -- to make sure no one misses the Coke message. "We need to offer unique content to catch people's attention," says Don Blanton, Wow Factor's president, "because people can tune out so much in Times Square, which has turned into video wallpaper." Coke, in fact, will unveil its new sign with "a three-minute documentary-ish evocation of Times Square past," that will be re-played every hour on the hour. Wow's Don Blanton says it will be so compelling that "people will come back to see it again and again."
The "spectacular" sign, which also features "sculptural convex and convex surfaces" creates an "odd, organic shape" that Coke North America's chief marketing officer, Javier Benito, says is meant to evoke the brand's "new graphics and packaging." Indeed, the sign (created by Daktronics, www.daktronics.com, of Brookings, South Dakota) will be "a locus of the worldwide advertising blitz promoting the ... new Coca-Cola C2 brand, which offers half the calories and carbohydrates of Classic Coke. Mr. Benito thinks Times Square is a great place "to celebrate the globalness of our brand," especially given the 30 million tourists who show up there each year. Slated to light up on July 1, Coke's new billboard also coincides with the centennial of both Times Square and Coke's entry into the New York market. A fun fact : The first case of Coke was delivered by one Arthur Pratt, "by horse-drawn wagon, to Lower Broadway, in April 1904.
Tim Manners, editor
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