Musings of a Marketing Maven

After blog­ging about “the female econ­omy” as the world’s biggest untapped mar­ket oppor­tu­nity, I’ve been on the look­out for evi­dence that com­pa­nies and brands are mar­ket­ing specif­i­cally to women. I’ve seen a cou­ple of exam­ples recently, an encour­ag­ing sign.

Both offers focus on help­ing women over­come the gaps in our under­stand­ing of mechan­ics – things most fathers don’t teach their daugh­ters. Both exam­ples are post-sales ser­vice offers; one will imme­di­ately drive incre­men­tal rev­enues (via auto repairs), which I under­stand is one of the higher-margin aspects of the auto industry.

Tac­tics for Local Markets

The two exam­ples I’ve seen most recently tar­get women in local markets.

• Bikes: My local bike shop offered a spe­cial clinic to teach women cyclists basic road­side repairs (tire patch­ing, cable fixes, etc.). My secret has been to rely upon the gal­lantry of male cyclists to help me patch tires when cycling by myself. But it would be less embar­rass­ing to know how to make sim­ple repairs myself.
• Cars: A BMW dealer in Mass­a­chu­setts is offer­ing a “women’s only tech ses­sion” this week­end, focused on diag­nos­tics and expla­na­tions. This will undoubt­edly drive up ser­vice rev­enues and also poten­tially sell branded accessories.

The idea of edu­cat­ing women about what’s involved in main­tain­ing our cars and bikes is prob­a­bly very sound. Many women treat their cars like “black boxes,” so who knows how many undi­ag­nosed prob­lems are lurk­ing, just wait­ing to strand moms when they’re already late for day­care pick-up.

What’s under the hood has always been a mys­tery, so I rely on my car’s on-board diag­nos­tic com­puter to alert me when it needs ser­vice. I also pay atten­tion to obvi­ous sig­nals like rough starts or unusual noises… As for my road bike, I can put the chain back on the derailleur on the rare occa­sions when it falls off, but that’s about it.

If the offers had been deliv­ered in way that seemed like they’d be fun, I might have tried one (if not for my sched­ule conflicts).

Spon­sor­ing women-only clin­ics may also help with sen­si­tiv­ity train­ing for the sales­peo­ple who work in the deal­er­ships. I know I’ve often felt invis­i­ble when walk­ing into a dealer’s show­room, for bikes or cars… It’s a humil­i­at­ing expe­ri­ence – espe­cially when I’m the buyer.

BMW Exam­ple: Good Idea, but Execution…?

The exe­cu­tion of this tac­tic by the BMW field mar­ket­ing team in Mass­a­chu­setts leaves some­thing to be desired. For exam­ple, the email address is mine, but the per­son­al­ized mes­sage is addressed to my hus­band, who is nei­ther female nor the car owner.

More­over, the copy­writ­ing is prob­a­bly a bit off-target for a female audi­ence. What the heck is “the DIS/Modic Computer/GT1?” Is it a chip in my elec­tronic key, or a device at the shop?

I’m not sure I really care – but do appre­ci­ate the fact that BMW main­tains a log of fault codes that helps them deter­mine what aspects of my car need servicing.

Improv­ing the Execution

The visual design of the email has a nuts-and-bolts indus­trial feel – prob­a­bly not too appeal­ing to most women. But at least the designer didn’t fall into the trap of using pink.

If BMW is going to take this women-only tech clinic tac­tic to other mar­kets, they should rethink their exe­cu­tion. Among other things it might be a good idea for their brand team to work with the field mar­ket­ing team on a visual lan­guage that’s true to the BMW brand while being more com­pelling to women if we’re the pri­mary audience…

They also missed the oppor­tu­nity for women to reply with a “good idea, but I have a sched­ule con­flict. Can I go at a later date?”

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