Our ADgender

Being a copywriter has its challenges – deadlines, clients who “don’t get it”, writer’s block, inept briefs etc. These obstacles to creative copy can be surmounted. More arduous is crossing the gender line. I had to do this some years ago when I was young to the advertising business and had to write a television ad to introduce a sanitary napkin to the market. Like the Titanic, it was doomed for disaster.

I was quite proud of my testosterone driven scripts. “These are quite innovative” I thought. Well, they sank before you could say, “Tanty in town.” My repeated attempts at writing for this product continually met the assault of the Creative Director’s hatchet. I was going insane. This definitely was not a job that I should have been working on. This memory returned to me while looking at an episode of The Pitch on AMC last week.

The two agencies had to pitch for Frangelico, an original hazelnut liqueur produced in Northern Italy. The task was to create a campaign which targeted “Molly” and Molly is 25-44 years old with an education and good income, who also enjoys caring for others and herself too. I had an aha moment when I saw one of the agencies consulting an all female agency because the brand targets women. That agency was Womenkind.

I love their philosophy – Womenkind is focused on the authentic desires, opinions, and wisdom of women. We apply our expertise, intuition and insight to create strategic marketing solutions that speak to women and connect them to companies, brands and each other.

I also love their tag – Profit from the wisdom of women.

Seeing that their was a Womankind got me thinking. At any of our local agencies where there are no female copywriters, do we conceive ads that communicate to women appropriately or do we write for women from a skewed point of view? (Yes we can ask questions of the female members of staff, but there is a difference that a team of female marketing professionals can make.)

I will be looking closer at our advertising landscape.

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