What Women Want
By: Julie Comstock
Tags: Equality, Diversity And Inclusion, Marketing, Advertising, Women In The Workplace

Photo credit: Cottonbro on Pexels

In an industry where buzzwords like “customer journey,” “persona,” “pain-points” and “influencer” dominate, it’s ironic that 91% of women feel advertisers don’t understand them. This is especially troubling considering they account for 85% of all purchases. It seems that in our efforts to craft clever creative, we lost site of something really important—reality. After all, advertising can’t be effective if it doesn’t resonate with its audience.

At Struck, we’re helping our clients connect with women in meaningful ways. In July of 2020, at the direction of our president, Pauline Ploquin, we strengthened our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion team, providing them with new resources and added support. Among other issues, Pauline asked the team to challenge gender stereotypes and open doors for female advancement. As a result, we have established mentoring partnerships, created new leadership opportunities and welcomed our women not only to sit at the table, but to conduct meetings around it.

The women at Struck are of diverse ages, cultures and backgrounds. Each brings her unique perspective to our various projects and teams. Welcoming these insights has helped us better meet the needs of our clients. It’s also challenged us to address faulty assumptions within ourselves and the work we create. We no longer believe in “male” projects or that stereotypically male industries can’t benefit from female contribution, or vice versa. In fact, we know that the more diverse our teams become, the more creative and effective our work can be. We also know that we all have personal bias. We recognize that it’s not unusual for our preconceived ideas to be wrong, especially about gender’s relationship to products, industries and brands.

For example, many of us were surprised to learn that women own 39% of all privately held businesses in the United States. With this information in hand, we featured several diverse, female business owners in a recent campaign. Not only was the approach unusual, it was meaningful. Our female audience was longing to be seen as the entrepreneurs they are and to have someone speak to their needs. At the same time, the campaign expanded our client’s reach and set them apart from the sea of sameness—a sea that was predominately white and male. Their brand instantly became more visible, modern, sophisticated and inclusive.

With diversity as a renewed priority, we are now featuring female voice talent more than ever before. In fact, a woman is now the voice for the state of Utah’s tourism efforts. It makes strategic sense considering women influence 80% of all travel decisions. We also recently used female talent to motivate an entire organization via an emotional, mantra video. The warm, optimistic timbre of her voice left viewers of both genders feeling inspired.

Our remarkable female employees have helped bio-tech companies address emotionally difficult topics with honesty and compassion. They have empathized with the difficulties of motherhood and brought understanding to the stigma of mental health. Besides these more expected impacts, our women have also contributed to kick-ass strategies, production, partnerships and creative, even in stereotypically male-dominated industries. We’re so excited to elevate them and their diverse talents, and we’re grateful for the benefits they bring to our agency and clients.