Catching up on TED Talks, I recently heard Johanna Blakley speak about how social media will end gender as we know it. Blakley’s hypothesis is that new media offers marketers the ability to segment in radically different ways, making traditional demographics obsolete. Because so many of our notions about gender are driven by media and marketing, Blakley believes that our current definitions of gender will also become irrelevant.
It’s funny to me that Blakley sees things this way – I see just the opposite – that marketing based on gender has become more prevalent, not less. Just look at the marketing bonanza around Blogher. The companies that support the conference do so because women are a prime audience for their products. And while I’d love to say that these marketers are thinking very differently about their target audience, the reality is that the products they promote tap into all of our traditional gender stereotypes – food, cleaning products, clothing, toys.
Blakley notes that the opportunity is great because websites collect masses of information about our interests, rather than just our age, gender, income and education. But even if that audience is cut into niche slivers, it’s not likely that the gender targets will be vastly different. After all, the people with the greatest interest in shopping and cleaning are the people who DO the shopping and cleaning. And the data suggests that’s still primarily women.
Recently comScore, a source of information for digital marketers, released a report on women and the internet. While the data is fascinating, it’s very clear that this industry leader has not abandoned traditional gender demographics. The report indicates, for example, that women are less likely to use Twitter to post original content and more likely to use the site to find deals and promotions, follow celebrities, and have conversations. If you were to cut the audience by interest, that data might look very different. comScore might say, for example, that women who are interested in celebrity gossip are more likely to follow stars, but that women who are interested in politics are not. But the report makes no such distinctions.
Ironically, Blakley’s talk wasn’t at the main TED conference, but at TED Women, a shadow gathering focused on women’s issues and interests. I’ve talked about how I dislike separating women from the greater group in the past – launching a separate platform like ForbesWoman for example, versus just incorporating more women’s writing into Forbes’ regular content. To me this is the ultimate in gender marketing. It’s crystal clear why shadow forums for women are launched; women are seen as an independent group of consumers with a separate set of marketing opportunities.
From where I sit, the internet has done little to change our definitions of gender. What it has done very effectively is build community that allows us to have a more transparent understanding of what gender means and how it is used to sell us all kinds of things. Call me a pessimist, but I think it’s unlikely that we’ll see a radical change in gender definition by marketers anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean that the digital world hasn’t helped us to overcome sexism in other, perhaps even more important way. The open conversation we are having about the implications of gender marketing will provoke change.
Cross posted at www.themamabee.com.
