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Tuesday

Man Should Be Brave.




I couldn't resist posting this ad from the French Connection campaign.

I posted it on my Facebook account and immediately got tons of positive responses - from women. They love this ad!

Why? Because it adheres to two the core values of smart marketing to women: be real and be brave.
We all agreed: "Brave men" are men who dare to be silly, funny, poke fun at themselves and who don't take their male egos too seriously.

We also liked the "realness" of the image. A guy with a beard, in a plain t-shirt proudly (not arrogantly) looking ahead. No airbrushing, no impossibly high cheekbones or six-pack stomach. No obvious marketing blah-blah or overtly irrealistic promises.

Just simple, tongue-in-cheek humor.

Great marketing-to-women, kudoz FC!

Getting it wrong for Valentine: Back into the doghouse!

Valentine's Day - the American way.
Remember the JC Penny "In the Doghouse" campaign of last year? (We wrote about it here).

The retailer has continued the successful campaign with an ad for Valentine's day called "Return to the Doghouse". Reading the adwomen blog this morning, I found out that the creative team behind the new ad, made by Saatchi and Saatchi NYC, contained no women. (The creative director of the first ad, Aimy Valentine, was not involved in the making of this ad).

The ladies over at the adwomen blog are right to pose the question: do we think it's noticeable that there was no women on the creative team for this ad? I'll let you decide that for yourself...



Valentine's Day - the British way.
And then there's this campaign, called "HardChorus" by Puma. As you know, this year Valentine's day fell on a Sunday, which in the UK means football. Puma found a very creative, tongue-in-cheek way to defuse the age-old field of tension between women and football. Enjoy!

Monday

To our moms we'll always be kids.

I just discovered this new ad by P&G that ties in with the winter Olympics taking place right now.
It's a great example of a very simple yet very effective ad that targets women - be they mothers or not.

As you'll see in the video below, the ad centers on the concept of Olympic athletes always remaining kids to their moms.

The ad works beautifully for a few reasons:

1. We can all relate to always being a kid in the eyes of our parents.

2. The Olympic athlete that is also just someone's kid: it's a disarmingly gentle concept that stands in stark contrast to the cut-throat competitive nature of the Olympics.

3. Many different types of women will be able to relate to it, for even if they are not moms, they are still someone's daughter.

4. It's human, it's honest, it's simple, it's real. And those are just about all the qualities most of us (women as well as men) are attracted to after years of global capitalism and consumerism-at-all-cost.


Wednesday

Sexist Super Bowl ads.

Oops they did it again!

The ladies over at Momlogic.com give us a look at this year's misplaced Super Bowl ads.
It's interesting to note that Dove - for years at the vanguard of gender equality and a beacon of light in the banishment of stereotypes - is on the list too!

Dove recently launched Dove Men+Care a range of personal care products for men. With it, Dove again uses positioning based on gender peer identification to attract men to the brand. I understand why the ladies at momlogic.com don't particularly like the Dove Super Bowl ad (nor do the guys over at Guardian.co.uk, by the way). It's not original nor creative, and it does go through the whole list of stereotypes - for both genders - in less than a minute. But it does have a positive, empowering take-away, so we'll give them credit for that.

Come on Dove, we're still looking to you to go beyond the standard cut-and-paste approach, to inspire us and to break new ground! Don't loose us now!

Tuesday

Let's talk about sex baby


A new meta-study conducted throughout 87 countries puts it to rest for once and for all: when it comes to sex, men and women aren't as different as we think.

The study, conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, reports that "men and women are more similar than different in terms of sexuality". They start having sex at almost the same age, they overlap in the number of partners, the frequency of intercourse, extramarital sex and condom use.

But there was one notable difference: reported masturbation and pornography use.
Not so strange, you may think: men simply prefer these "autoerotic activities" to women.

Maybe not. Women are taught from a very early age that "autoeroticism" is bad, socially unacceptable and certainly not discussed. Actually: it simply doesn't exist. So the difference does not lie in the fact that men prefer auto erotic sexual activities more than women do, it just means it is more socially acceptable for men to talk about it than it is for women to do so.

The report also supports some of the more popularly held theories of evolutionary psychology.

This
Newsweek article discusses the theories through believers and non-believers.

You can read Tom Jacob's review of the report here.