Identity & Gender-Targeted Marketing

By: Rashida McCarley

Gender-targeted marketing is one the most widely used areas of marketing demographic segmentation. Advertising in print magazines alone is a billion-dollar industry, and even with the temperamental market, online segments are delivering further advertising options. Advertisers have a clear voice in the projection of magazine content, direction and brand-messaging. This relationship can become problematic when certain gender-stereotypes and media-created insecurities are instilled in editorial content for revenue sales. Consumer co-dependence is big business, and alongside advertisers and major corporate companies, publishing houses are ready to cash in as well, further perpetuating gender role stereotypes. For further analysis, we will discuss women’s lifestyle magazines in general, with further analysis of Woman’s World Magazine, deemed one of America’s most conflicted magazines and a mirror of our culture today. As members of the press, we are only having discourse on gender images and how it affects advertising in mainstream publications.

Woman’s World is a women’s lifestyle magazine with a weekly circulation reaching 1.6 million people annually, with women making up 95% of their readership. “Woman’s World has a formula that works: The lead story is always about weight loss, right next to pictures of cupcakes and cheese. Make them feel bad about their weight, then entice them into eating more!”[1] Many competitive magazines targeted to women share similar schizophrenia of weight-loss/self-improvement alongside 1950′s ideals of homemaker and emotional messaging towards food. Words like “decadent”, “orgasmic”, “ravishing” and “bliss” are examples of emotional words to describe rich, mega calorie-inducing food appearing across an uber-thin model. This is not surprising since advertisers use standard gender stereotypes in their brand messaging. “Gender roles are created through a complex socialization process. Roles for each sex are reinforced through dress, behavior, and social interaction. Advertising layouts in the media are one way that gender roles are presented to society. Models and products are depicted in ways that presumably make them attractive to the consumer and encourage product purchase. Gender roles exert pressure on both sexes. Traditionally, for men, the emphasis is outward, on professional achievement and enjoyment of a certain type of lifestyle more than personal appearance. Women are encouraged to look inward, critiquing the appearance of their bodies and faces.” Women are “feminine, submissive, weak, passive, intuitive, emotional and communicative.” Men are “masculine, dominant, strong, aggressive, intelligent, rational and active.” According to Mediaed.org, while men are into cars/technology, women are into shopping and beauty products. Men are into getting drunk, while women are into the social atmosphere that drinking brings. Men are into casual sex with many partners while women are into monogamy.

As advertising and publishing companies converge into powerhouses, “big business” models are further instilled and spread across major media outlets, diminishing diversity in brand and media images. “Convergence between brands, media owners and technology platforms is gathering apace and brands are capitalizing on this in order to add value to the relationship they have with their customers. In ABC terms, this is great news for advertisers as the customer publications that accept third party advertising are becoming even more of a regular touch point for their readers. ” [3] Corporations have a huge incentive to make sure that women are always in pursuit of happiness – in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction or need for improvement of their body images and personal relationships. Yet, also emotionally-connected with food and consumption. Men, however, are programmed by print media to earn even more money and enhance their lifestyle with technology, boosters, and “toys”. Advertisers are assuming men are where they want to be, but should want an enhancement, while women are like a hamster in a wheel, racing and spending to reach perfection.

1. Gawker.com, April 25, 2011

2. Mediaed.org, Magazine advertising and gender, 2003

3. The Apa, April 2011