In case there were any lingering doubts about the power females have in their families, Kristie Painting, vice-president of sales and marketing at Olive Media, squashed them yesterday morning at the start of the first-ever Marketing to Women conference.
Females, said Painting, have been named “CFO of the household.”
It’s a hefty responsibility, but that doesn’t mean women like to brag about it or the amount of money they have, as Patricia Lovett-Reid, SVP of TD Waterhouse Canada, explained during her keynote at the event.
When one of her books, Surprise: You’re Wealthy! Every Woman’s Guide to Financial Independence, had less-than-stellar sales, focus group feedback showed it was because women didn’t like that the Surprise: You’re Wealthy! text got the weight on the cover.
“It’s gauche to say you’re wealthy” was the resounding input. So when the publisher downplayed that text and pumped up the “financial independence” part, the book became a best seller.
Lovett-Reid also shared results from a survey she conducted online of 1,000 Canadian women about their thoughts on money.
The survey found that 69% of women make their own investment decisions in conjunction with an advisor or a planner, but 60% of women also said they trust a used car salesman more than they do their financial institution.
“That tells me we’re not where we need to be in terms of giving advice and so I do think that’s a big focal point for us,” said Lovett-Reid.
The survey also showed only 34% of Canadian women have a financial plan, and define financial success as the ability to meet their day-to-day expenses and pay off their debt. Lovett-Reid wants Canadian women to dream bigger.
“Those are noble quests, but there’s so much more that we can go after and some are just afraid to do it,” she said.
And because statistics show that women are living an average of five years longer than men, in addition to high divorce rates “more and more women are going to be totally in control of their financial situation, and many in their early 50s,” said Lovett-Reid.
During the conference’s second session, “The View From Here,” some of the industry’s top female executives shared stories of how they got to where they are today and valuable lessons they learned along the way.
Brenda Woods, head of marketing at Visa Canada, shared the best advice she ever got from a boss – use your natural personality in your job.
Woods had just come out of a meeting in which she’d been her “feisty” self and her boss commended her on how vocal she’d been. His advice: “Always be true to your personality and find a place where your personality works. Don’t go somewhere they want you to be something you’re not… The core of who you are does not change and you need to find an environment that respects that,” he told her.
Nancy Vonk, co-chief creative officer at Ogilvy Toronto, stressed the importance of having a mentor, be it a man or woman. She remembered back to 1993 when one of her mentors, a creative director at the agency, insisted she and creative partner Janet Kestin take on management roles.
“I think women often lack a clear vision of who they really are and who they could be,” said Vonk. “There’s nothing like a mentor to listen to when they say, ‘It’s time, step up.’”
Mentoring has become an integral part of Dove Canada’s Dove Self Esteem Fund, which brand director Sharon MacLeod touched upon during her impassioned mid morning session.
The Fund was established as an evolution of the Campaign for Real Beauty to help foster positive image-related self-esteem amongst women.
“One out of every four women has an eating disorder… To me that’s a shocking number,” said MacLeod. “ I promise you know her, she’s in your family, and chances are you don’t realize it.”
Over the last seven years Dove has extended the campaign on multiple fronts to include a play, sleepover events and an online soap opera to help expand the definition of beauty. “As a brand you need to change and evolve,” stressed MacLeod.
One of the first creative executions Dove Canada launched was called the “tick-box” campaign that featured the image of a voluptuous woman in her undergarments on a billboard, and boxes for consumers to text in whether or not they saw the woman as “fit” or “fat.”
Despite generating a considerable amount of buzz among consumers and media, MacLeod said she knew if Dove launched a second phase of the tick-box campaign, it wouldn’t elicit the same response.
The day ended with a lively panel discussion on how to engage female bloggers in a way that’s authentic, and on their terms.
Natasha Koifman, president of Toronto PR agency NKPR, recommended getting a good sense of bloggers’ tastes rather than sending them products that aren’t relevant to them. For instance, since skin and hair care company Kiehl’s is one of NKPR’s clients, Koifman said “we know the skin type of every blogger we have a relationship with.”
Donna Marie Antoniadis, co-founder and CEO of She’sConnected Multimedia Corp., said there is still the misconception that bloggers will write about anything, which simply isn’t the case, because “they won’t compromise their online reputation.”
So how do you deal with the risk of a blogger giving a negative review?
“We quite often have very expensive, brand name products sent to some of our writers who have openly written something against those products,” added Elaine Kunda, group publisher and CEO, B5Media.
“If you can demonstrate the value of the product, that it’s helpful or interesting… I don’t think that’s crossing the line because they’re there to review, understand and be early adopters of products,” she said.
