Raise Your Game: Sports Marketing to Women on @thisisYCN →
But that second form of power - the kind found in the bonds of sisterhood, rising above the need to attract men - is far more difficult to grapple with. It’s not like the desire to look good just disappears when we want to be able to play on the level of the guys - whether in work, our social lives or in sport. However, the media stories out there seem to make it more and more challenging to see the two as anything other than mutually exclusive. It’s no wonder sports brands face such a challenge designing for and marketing to women. Almost every female athlete who trains and competes with men faces that moment of appearing “in civvies” to the gawping stares of guys with whom she was previously sexually invisible. In the company of these men, she has either one form of power or the other, but rarely both at the same time. By now, it’s become a cliche to say ‘women dress for other women’ but understanding why we do so is less obvious. Perhaps one reason for the success of a blog like The Man Repeller is that she frames fashion in a context in which looking good is not determined by one’s ability to attract men. Fashion should be about having fun and exploring one’s personality through the things we put on our bodies. This irreverent philosophy is extremely liberating. No wonder @themanrepeller has over 40,000 followers on Twitter: girls just want to be her friend. And the fashion industry is slowly waking up. If there’s ever going to be a change, the road will be paved by more avant garde brands. Lanvin’s latest digital campaign http://youtu.be/cwwcnUBY9Zg (A/W 2011) has been a relative hit (in terms of gaining popularity in the mainstream online world that is YouTube) compared to the kind of attention garnered by other fashion brands. The campaign video shows two high-profile models, Karen Elson and Raquel Zimmermann, awkwardly dancing around in front of what is presumably some form of a Dance Nation game. They look silly. But they also look like they’re having a brilliant time. They never appear in the throws of love with a man. They never get swept off their feet and carried into the sunset or to the edge of some Paris balcony. They are simply goofing around and loving every minute of it. We want to be there with them. We want to be their friends. And we really want to wear what they’re wearing. Lanvin have recognized - if inadvertently - that by speaking to women on a level at which their models are not competing against other women for the attention of men, they’re able to tap into a deeper and more effective desirability. They’ve tapped into sisterhood. Perhaps when women dress for women, it’s specifically to attract other women. Having fun with fashion makes it about sisterhood not sexuality. So, back to sports marketing. In full transparency, I am currently a consultant to Rapha, a cycling apparel brand (these views are entirely my own and not necessarily those of my clients). Cycling, like virtually every sport, suffers from an overwhelming focus on men, who make up about 80% of the sport’s participants. Marketing sports brands to women becomes a nearly universal afterthought. And in most cases, sports brands will approach their female market in one of three ways: 1. Take a page out of the lads’ mags and conventional fashion imagery to market to women through highly sexualized imagery which likely operates more as entertainment for male shoppers than as genuine marketing to women. Of the three, the most effective is typically the third. Employed by Nike, Patagonia, Sweaty Betty and lululemon athletica, this tactic seems to understand that when women compete, we compete against ourselves. This is true. And to an extent, the move is a wise one. Particularly considering the obvious alternatives. Their stories revolve around independence, adventure and sometimes even toughness. Athlete models are often shot in dramatic lighting, independent goddesses on a pillar, spotlit, on the top of a mountain. Always alone. This third tactic gives women permission to be fearless and awesome in the face of adversity and loneliness. And it sort of works. Falling back on one of these three orthodox tactics of communication with women in sports marketing highlights two underlying issues. The first issue is that the people doing the marketing (mostly men - but even a lot of women trained to compete professionally in the male-dominated ad industry) suffer from little more than a superficial knowledge of women. We should, as marketing strategist Bridget Brannan so aptly puts it, ‘treat women like a foreign market’. We have our own rituals and rules, languages, behaviours and value systems; so if these marketers put as much effort into understanding women as they do trying to understand, say, the Chinese or Indian markets, they might learn something (2). Without the confidence that comes from deep knowledge of a market, it’s nearly impossible to innovate. Or lead. The second issue is deeper and more subtle. There seems a bizarre aversion to portraying groups of women together, having fun doing something really really hard. Obviously there are occasional exceptions but they seem to rather prove the rule. What is it about groups of visibly strong, powerful women that is so difficult for popular culture to digest? Yes, when women compete, the race is typically against ourselves. But when we compete as a group, we thrive; we love to share our success with others because the success and even the failure forms the bonds of sisterhood. We don’t need to win to feel powerful. The media and popular culture have been really effective at defining and stereotyping women. We’re athletes. We’re mothers. We’re business women. We’re flirty. We’re serious. We’re bookish. We’re bubbly. But heaven forbid we’re perceived to be all of these at the same time, which most of us actually are. Is it possible that portraying us as a group feels dangerous because our many sides, our many contradictions and our many personalities are revealed? It’s not just power in numbers or power in sisterhood, it’s also power in confusion. We are both sexually visible and invisible when we play sports. How confusing we must be….! Women still want to look good when we play sports, not necessarily because it’s how we think we’ll attract a mate. Fit and quality aside, we want to look good because we also associate looking good with having fun. When it comes to sports marketing to women, don’t be afraid to take men out of the equation, this is one place we don’t feel the need to compete for them. But don’t forget to put women back into the equation and let us have fun; we will anyways, with or without you. Your move. References:
“Always wear lipstick. Never get married.” In the words of novelist and feminist writer Danzy Senna, there are two sides of the feminine power coin. On the one hand, there’s the power which comes from being sexually attractive to men, and on the other the power that comes from being sexually invisible to them. In the instance of the former, women compete with one another; but in the latter are very good at working together (1). But all too often, women succeed in the first at the expense of the sisterhood which comes from the second.
While I may face knee-jerk criticism over this statement, it’s worth saying that one of the most important jobs demanded of women is to look good. Though there is some biological validity to this statement, what is particularly interesting is how it is perpetually exploited and amplified by fashion, the media and marketing. For good reason: it works.
2. Market to women in exactly the same way as one markets to one’s male market, without considerations for different needs. This often includes the tactic of using recognizable professional athletes as models.
3. Showcase the “empowered woman” alone. Out on the road. In the gym. Up the mountain. In the ocean or lake or wherever she gets her feet wet. Always in isolation.
1. Rebecca Walker, ed. To Be Real (1995)
2. Bridget Brennan. Why She Buys (2009)
