Why Should Marketers Care About Leo's Girlfriends?

 

In the past week we’ve all seen it circulating on Instagram and TikTok: a woefully incriminating graph evidencing the correlation between when Leo breaks up with his girlfriends and how old they are. ICYMI: not many survive beyond 25.

 

Leo’s Law unleashed a firestorm of activity in the twitterverse, with many weighing in on the problematic nature of this phenomenon. As the Guardian comments, “Twenty-five is a milestone year. It’s when the development and maturation of your prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for impulse control and decision-making, is finally complete. At 25 you have reached maturity and have a fully formed brain. You also have absolutely no chance of dating Leonardo DiCaprio. As has been frequently observed, the 47-year-old actor appears to be incapable of a relationship with anyone over the age of 25.”

 

Leo’s Law: DiCaprio's dating history TrustLittleBrother / Reddit

 

Rich old men dating young women is, of course, nothing new. Why is the world so hung up on it now?

 

In the post-MeToo era we’ve demanded more accountability from those we revere, and Leo’s Law is alarmingly inconsistent we the progress we expect around gender equity. Don’t take my word for it: research has shown that the age gap between partners decreases in countries with greater gender equality. A paper on the subject notes, “As gender equality increased, women expressed less preference for older men, men expressed less preference for younger women, and consequently the sex difference in the preferred age of mates became smaller.”

 

So what does this have to do with marketing?

 

The way we represent women in marketing is, unsurprisingly and uninterestingly, gender biased. What’s interesting is how much this gender bias compounds with age bias. Google shared findings in an analysis of 2.7 million YouTube ads:

• Female characters are more likely to be in their 20s and 30s in ads, while male characters are shown across age groups.
• Globally, male characters are an average of four years older than female characters in ads.
• Over the five years examined, the average age of female characters stayed relatively consistent while male characters got older.

 

Google explains the problem with the lack of representation of older women in marketing by observing consumer behavior, “Audiences respond to inclusive storytelling. We found that YouTube videos uploaded by advertisers featuring at least as many female characters as male yielded 30% more views than other videos, telling us that when advertisers make their creative more inclusive, people watch. There's an appetite for stories that truly reflect the complexity and diversity of our world. Brands that respect that diversity will earn the trust of their audiences.”

 

Fletcher Knight recently outlined the opportunity in a thought piece that corroborates Google’s findings on consumer preferences:

“Results from a survey taken by Ben Barry, founding director of the Fashion Diversity Lab at Ryerson University, Canada, found that women are 200 percent more likely to buy a product when they see it advertised by someone who reflects their age, and 65 percent less likely when they didn’t. We believe that marketers need to start taking that to heart. ‘Brands are targeted to a different generation, which makes me feel irrelevant,’ a 60-year-old New Yorker told us. ‘No one is really talking to women in their 60s on any level. I want them to talk to me.”

 

It's not rocket science – but as an industry, we still haven’t cracked the code. And time’s running out.

 

We’re speaking to an aging population that will outlive any previous generation, and women are on pace to be the majority in this age group. More than that, they control spending. Forbes published some staggering stats about age 50+ Women:

• They comprise the largest demographic of incomes over a $100,000;
• They control 95% of household purchasing decisions and 80% of luxury travel purchases;
• 82% of them are open to new brands;
• 75% are willing to pay a little extra for both quality and convenience.

 

Need more proof? Check out the “Empty Nesters” and “Boomer Women” section of this site. One noteworthy stat: Over the next decade, women will control two-thirds of consumer wealth in the United States and be the beneficiaries of the largest transference of wealth in our country’s history. Estimates range from $12 to $40 trillion. Many Boomer women will experience a double inheritance windfall, from both parents and husband. (Source: Fleishman-Hillard New York).

 

Yet, by and large we’re still not talking to older women.

 

Leo’s dating history seems to suggest that for him, women have an expiration date. If marketers continue to follow suit, it could pose the biggest missed opportunity they see in their lifetime.  

 

 

Digital Marketing and the End of Gender

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.