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women really want
Chatting with marketing guru Mary Lou Quinlan
By Jamie L. Jones
Mary Lou Quinlan is the founder and CEO of a marketing consulting group called Just Ask a Woman. Unlike many in marketing, who rely on focus groups to gain insights into consumer attitudes, Quinlan uses a talk show format, in which she dishes with women about their brand choices. She calls the process, in the spirit of Oprah, "brand therapy." Her group's client list includes Bristol-Myers Squibb, General Motors, Hearst Magazines, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Time Inc., among others. Quinlan made her bones at advertising agencies that include DDB Needham New York, Ally & Gargano and N. W. Ayer, handling such accounts as Procter & Gamble, General Motors, AT&T, Continental Airlines and Avon Products. N. W. Ayer named Quinlan CEO in 1995. She left her post in 1999 to found Just Ask a Woman, a division of b|com3. Since then, Quinlan has also built a brand for herself as a mentor to overachieving, stressed-out women. She credits her perspective on that point to a pivotal five-week leave of absence that she took before forming her own company.
What are women’s consumption patterns? What are some of the old assumptions about women, and what do marketers need to know now?
The old assumptions—and some of them still exist—are that the only companies that should be concerned with what women want are the companies that sell products only to women—the idea that "Oh, cosmetics companies need to be concerned about that, or fashion companies need to be concerned about that."
Somehow, with hard goods, automobiles, technology, real estate or financial services, there’s still a stereotypical customer who, if companies picture one person, would be a man.
What is invisible is that the woman is the one who often uses the product more than a man. She has influenced its purchase, as in "if you’re going to go get a car, this is the one I want, because I’ll be driving around all day with the family—not you."
With consumer electronics it’s the same thing. She’s much more involved with a television or a computer because she’s not only doing it at work, but she’s monitoring the kids’ use or teaching them. So some of her influence is invisible to retailers who haven’t wakened to the fact that she could help them sell more if they just listened to her.
The fact is that women either buy or influence the purchase of 85 percent of goods bought today. They’re buying for everybody. There are a number of categories that women are buying in, whether they're financial services, health products and services, or huge technology categories, where women are either equal or greater buyers than men. That, combined with the areas where they’re buying for themselves and their families, goes contrary to evidence that they’re not an important consumer group.
At Just Ask a Woman you talk to women in a mock talk show format instead of a focus group. Could you explain that methodology?
Typically, when marketers are doing qualitative research with consumers, they are still using a technique that was invented in the '50s: focus groups. Women—consumers in general, but particularly women—have come so far in becoming veteran focus-group attendees. They know the drill, and they kind of come, give a couple of rote answers, take the money and run.
We are using a very familiar medium—not just television, but specifically the talk show—to create a new excitement for them, to make their participation feel more important and more meaningful because they’re on camera and nothing is hidden.
There’s no two-way mirror as there is in a focus group. The cameras are in front of them; the client is in the room.
It’s treating women with respect to say, "Hey, you deserve to see who’s listening to you, and what you are saying is important, so speak into the microphone and tell us what you think."
Women really are responding to it because they’re familiar with talk shows as being the place where you tell some deep secrets. So if a marketer is trying to get at what the underlying motivation is for why a woman buys something or thinks something, they want to put her in an environment that is really conducive to her opening up.
Isn’t it counterintuitive that women open up more in front of a camera than in a more controlled, closed environment?
You would think so. You would think that it would be the case that they would freeze, but it’s not. I think everybody has a yearning to get in their 15 minutes of fame.
So it’s actually exciting to feel, "Hey, I’m on TV, I’m comfortable with it, it’s a cool place to be."
The cameras are within 10 feet of them, and they’re looking right into the camera and answering the question. They’re not afraid of it. They don’t shut down.
Traditionally marketers put eight to 10 women together to talk to them, and that puts a bigger burden on telling the truth in a way. When I put 25 women together, there’s a little anonymity. They think, "There’s this woman in the group, and she said something really honest, so I’ll say something really honest."
Somehow the camera becomes this private ear, so women think, "I want to tell what’s on my mind." It’s brand therapy.
Do you think this is a method that would work for other consumer groups as well? Would it work with a group of 25 men? Would there be the same kind of energy?
I think they’d have the energy. Maybe it’s not a totally fair judgment because I’ve not done one of these groups with men, and I have done many, many with women.
Women like to share both what they’re excited about and what they’re afraid of. They heal each other almost by saying "I’m worried about this, or this didn’t work for me," and another woman will say, "Oh, you should try this."
Women don’t mind admitting what they don’t know. They don’t mind admitting when they’re confused or concerned.
Men are often not big about admitting a mistake or defeat. They are more about stating their own ground and making their own point, or joke, or whatever.
I think they’d have fun. I think there’d be a lot of energy. I think you’d get a lot of the upside of why they do things, but I don’t think we’d understand why they don’t do things.
I’ve only done one set of groups where I’ve had men and women mixed together, and I found in those sessions that the men made speeches when they got called on, as opposed to listening to others.
And the women, I thought, paid them a little too much respect as far as what they were saying.
These groups are meant to be equal. Everybody’s point counts. So I wouldn’t find this as a way to get men to open up.
I would think there are other ways, with smaller numbers of men, even one-on-one sessions where there’s no face lost when you open up.
But no one else is doing these talk shows. I’m not a market researcher, and I think researchers in general look at it with a little curiosity. They like being objective, and I’m not objective. I’m a woman with women. And that’s why they tell me things.
Do you think sometimes that the talk show format will go the way of the focus group—that it might get played out as a late '90s, turn-of-the-millennium phenomenon?
We keep evolving how we talk with women. We do small conversations. We do things like a cocktail party with women. We keep looking at the ways that women like to be together.
If you look at the growth of investment clubs and book clubs, women are almost creating these circles of friends as ways of sharing what’s going on with their lives as well as the subject at hand.
I think that we’ll just keep moving to where women are.
Talk shows, from what I’ve learned by speaking with women around the world, are powerful—in Latin America, in Europe. I don’t think they’ve seen their day yet. We’re just refining how it’s done and making sure we never are in the area of the Jerry Springers of the world.
We are much more aligned with Oprah’s world, more humanistic, sincere and intelligent and not ever over the top.
What advice would you give to advertisers trying to reach women during an economic downturn or a recession? And how should messages change after the attacks? Are these issues that affect women differently from other purchasing groups?
I’m having a hard time separating the economic downturn from the attacks and the war, because the two are together in women’s minds. We continue to talk with women.
I didn’t for the first two weeks after Sept. 11, but I’ve been out in the field since then and talking with both executive women and consumers about products—especially high-end products. I’ve seen them looking at high-end investment products more as investments than luxury.
This particular combination of the downturn and the fear has created something of a sense of this is the only life I’m going to have. So even if you’re shorter on money or worried about your job, you’re also tugged with "I don’t know what my life is going to be like anymore."
And nobody does. There’s still an urge to consume. It’s just that the positioning of the product could be done in a way that isn’t shoving lightweight values in her face.
When I think about how we were selling most things, it had degenerated into a lot of stupid jokes, a lot of one-liners.
Crass ways of selling don’t fly when you’re worried about the money and you’re worried about your life. It isn’t so much that it has to be hearts-and-flowers nostalgic or anything like that.
But there does need to be a deeper reaching into what the human values of this product are and answering the question, "How’s this going to make my life better?"
These are all really good marketing principles when it comes down to it.
I think we’re being much more sensitive to consumption for consumption’s sake and trying to connect to the benefit of comfort, the benefit of family, a benefit to truly feeling better, healthier, and happier.
Those benefits had sort of gone away for a while. It’s almost as if we were embarrassed to talk about them, or that they were too sentimental. But I don’t feel that right now. Women are very, very personally attuned to what’s going on and expect marketers to be as sensitive.
What do you think of the current trend of patriotic advertising?
I think it will have, not a short shelf-life, but something that is appropriate, and something that we’ll see through Thanksgiving time, Christmas, and the holidays.
These will be particularly emotional holidays, and connecting the spirit of the holidays with advertising to America's spirit will be natural. And I think actually people now like the reinforcement of that.
This (patriotism) has been out of our conversation. The American flag has not been anywhere for a number of years. So it’s not like you’re pulling out a war horse. You’re pulling out something that all of a sudden seems special again.
Those products that are able to do this are already American icons, brands whose reason for being has to do with basic human values. For a brand like Mountain Dew, I think it would be totally incongruous to have something like an American flag execution. It’s built around irreverence and rebellion and youthful what-the-heck.
To slap an American flag on that would not connect with the target audience, let alone fit with the brand identity. I think that the brands that can do it ought to be doing it. They are also American icons. Coca-Cola is, or an insurance company is.
But over time, by early next year, I think we’ll see a little less of it. And then we’ll see emotional values that relate to people and not just patriotism.
October 19, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Jamie L. Jones is a staff writer for Media Life.
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