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Soulati-'TUDE!

New Gender Marketing With Oakley And Ruffles

07/08/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Advertising Age hasn’t inspired too much blog fodder of late; perhaps it’s due to its new ugly format and thin reporting. It was too serendipitous, though, that in the June 3, 2013 issue two stories about gender marketing with men and Ruffles and women and Oakley appeared pages apart. 

Which got me thinking (always dangerous). 

Why do brands continue to have gender marketing challenges in this day and age? You know, the era of women’s equality, stay-at-home dads, paternity time, and breaking the glass ceiling, etc.?

Oakley Trying To Sun Glass Women

The sub-head of the story really surmises the irony of this brand’s challenges, “At the $1 billion (yes, billion) apparel and eye glass company, the women’s business accounts for just 10% of sales, making it the biggest opportunity.” (Read that again without gasping, really?)

Apparently, the brand has attempted to sell to women but has obviously failed. No women were managing teams; they were in product development roles instead. Pink became the predominant color of choice for the women’s line because male leadership thought every woman identified with that. Few women were positioned in leadership ranks and testosterone prevailed in the male-dominated company. 

Same-sex companies targeting same-sex customers does not beget inter-gender marketing success; I guess Oakley found that out.

Hmm, I wonder if Proctor and Gamble has noticed a trend for Daddy Mamas and is redoing diaper branding to make the box more manly?

 

Ruffles Women And The Bro Code

Ruffles, the potato chip with ridges, has always been a family brand – moms buy and the family eats. Getting too family for its britches, brand marketers sent a team of women into bars to immerse in the male snack-food psyche and crack the bro code. Men, who are too close to men, couldn’t master such research due to the introspectiveness of that analysis (or some such).

For three years (wow), the women infiltrated the snack-food brotherhood and learned a lot that resulted in these adjustments to the lowly potato chip with ridges:

  • Men shop for junk food on impulse; 25% of chips are purchased in smaller sizes. 
  • The brand began to target millennial men.
  • Packaging was redone with inspiration fueled strictly with testosterone.
  • A spokesman the likes of Ron Burgundy meshed with Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood (how the heck are they millennial inspiration?) was created, named Ruff McThickridge.
  • The Ultimate Ruffle was born with thicker, manly ridges along with Ruffles Max to go alongside the beer (not so heavy).
  • Flavors were beefier and included beer-battered onion rings.

What’s so astonishing is the longevity of both these brands. Oakley is 38-years-old and Ruffles has to be older than that. How is it that this kind of eye-opening gender marketing research is happening now? 

So glad it is, as I pity the poor man who can’t have a potato chip because the packaging is too girly. As for my sunglasses? I think I’ll settle for my Prada. Goodness knows those Oakley wraparounds would totally interfere with my curls. 

 

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Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: Advertising Age, Brand, Business, gender marketing, marketing, Oakley, Potato chip, Ron Burgundy, Ruffle, Sunglasses, Wikipedia

Sex, Drugs, Scandal — BAM!

11/12/2012 By Jayme Soulati

English: General David Petraeus in testimony

English: General David Petraeus in testimony (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yet another one bites the dust. Former Army General David Petraeus who resigned as chief of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Nov. 9, 2012 is now a dishonored member of the Walk of Shame Club with such well-known celebrities as Armstrong, Woods, Clinton, Kennedy, Schwarzenegger, Edwards,  Sandusky, Weiner, Spitzer, and hundreds of others.

This post today has no tips on how to avoid such a scandal. This post today does nothing to support those dishonored. This post is merely a rant of disgust that We the People can no longer trust that our favorite athlete, elected official, appointed official and those we hold in the highest regard in the upper echelons of celebrity in this country will act professionally and without sexual or drug-induced scandal.

What the fuck? (The first time I’ve ever used this word in my writings here; I apologize to anyone offended.)

Instead of waiting for those we should trust to prove they’re dishonorable, should we already think they’re not trustworthy at the get go and that their “private” life is actually one of trysts and pseudonyms?  Are they just “too clean” and we should think there’s an affair somewhere behind the scenes?

How about this marriage thing? Every one of these gents above was married at the time of their disgrace. Not only do their wives and children suffer, the entire company or political office or sports team or foundation also suffer in tremendous shame and horror.

What can we do except open the paper and flick on the news with a click every day to see more of the same. Are you getting used to this sort of thing? Has it become mundane and old hat?

If so, then we have to stop and pull back to the core of our values and demand that those who lead this nation uphold public office and stop letting extreme power and alleged invincibility go to their body parts.  We have to stop accepting a smarmy, “I’m sorry,” and demand more; how about paying back tax payers for the money it costs to investigate these scandals (especially if they sit in public office)?

I have no answers, Friends. Do you?

 

Related articles
  • The Sins Of General David Petraeus
  • The Petraeus affair: notes on a scandal | Michael Wolff
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Filed Under: Thinking Tagged With: Affair, Bill Clinton, Central Intelligence Agency, Clinton, David Petraeus, Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States, Wikipedia

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