The thought patterns of men and women map well to the way Value Propositions and Brand Stories operate. Reconciling them is as challenging as any long-term relationship.
Men make decisions faster and more confidently than women, yet pay far less attention to important details. Women are better listeners, observers, and communicators than men, yet are often hesitant to act on all that information. Those gender-based tendencies create all kinds of relationship and cultural problems, but they also mirror a common customer paradox, regardless of gender: a high level of brand engagement doesn’t always lead to a high level of purchase frequency.
Stereotypes often fall apart when you deal with individuals, but those general male/female thought and interaction patterns are well-documented among social scientists (here, here, here, and here, for example), and keep showing up in the research and sales data I work with, project after project. Beyond providing evidence-based support to all kinds of lazy gender-based jokes, these patterns can be very instructive in understanding the similarly irksome tension that can occur between a product’s Value Proposition, and the Brand Story that represents it.
I’ve seen the engagement-versus-action gap show up in recent projects: the people who care the most about your brand attributes are not always the same people who are your best customers. In several cases, the split did indeed occur along gender lines: the strongest customers were predominantly male; those most enthusiastic about the brand attributes (but far less frequent customers) were predominantly female. And this is in product categories that do not inherently skew towards one gender.
In those cases, the sales data showed an almost perfect Pareto distribution, the “80/20 rule'" where about 80% of your sales or profits comes from only 20% of your customer base. In those projects, that 20% was dominated by male customers, who actually weren’t all that well-versed in the details of the client brand’s key attributes. The 80% section of the distribution was predominantly female, who really liked to discuss the product, its category, and why it was important to them. But those ladies just didn’t buy anywhere nearly as frequently as the gents did. In categories where high purchase frequency is crucial (as opposed to things like cars or smartphones), this is an important dynamic to untangle.
Ultimately, it comes down to the core issue of how people, male or female, do or do not make decisions based on the data presented to them. It’s helpful to remember that a buying decision is just that, a decision. The different ways men and women process and act on information has a profound impact on how they make decisions, and in turn, how they buy. The link between data and action is what matters, and it also releases the discussion from being only about men versus women.
The goal is to have the Value Proposition and the Brand Story working together as a decision-making engine that drives repeat sales. Once you start unpacking that, you start seeing where the key friction points are.
Speed in decision-making is based on confidence, whether or not that confidence has been earned via actual competence. Anyone can make a bad decision quickly. Making good decisions quickly is indeed the mark of a true expert.
One of the best books ever written about decision-making. I've only read a few, but since I'm a man, I'm certain this one is the best.
Dr. Gary Klein, a cognitive psychologist who has written several excellent books about the intricacies of human decision-making, has demonstrated that this is true. Experts (male and female) who must make momentous decisions quickly every day (like ER doctors, firefighters, and military commanders) learn via vast experience to recognize patterns, not just individual data points. Pattern recognition allows them to analyze situations and act appropriately faster than novices can even begin to observe the specifics of the same situation. That’s true even when the experts themselves are unaware of how and why they made those excellent decisions.
The operative element for my purpose here is not the presence of actual expertise in the individual, it’s the belief the individual has that expertise is present within them (i.e.,him). That’s one reason men make decisions faster; independent of the facts, they’re more likely to believe they know what they’re doing. Men swear by the maxim that even a bad decision is better than no decision. Sadly, even when they are supremely accomplished, women are more likely to adopt the approach of a novice; carefully weighing the merits of a range of options before acting.
So when it comes to your product’s value proposition, you want your customers to think like a stereotypical man, to believe they’re experts regardless of their actual track record; to have the confidence that buying from you again and again is what smart people like themselves do.
When you’re defining all the details and attributes and mission statements behind your brand story, you want your customers to think like a stereotypical woman; to carefully take it all in, retain it, mull it over, and understand that the value proposition is worthy of their time and consideration, this time and every other time.
If combining those two different approaches to thought and communication at the same time to the same product sounds really difficult to pull off day after day, well, so is marriage.
I am not a social scientist. But doing market research for a long time winds up being an inadvertent lab class in gender studies, intertwined with Econ 101. Conducting market research requires respondents, and respondents need to agree to show up, participate, and respond to questions. Doing so requires them to think, access prior experiences, and then communicate to the researcher and each other. Male and female respondents do these things very differently.
Moderating a focus group of eight or nine men about fast food is an exercise in deciphering the series of grunts you hear when you ask simple, direct questions. They will indeed grunt louder and faster when the topic turns to bacon, but otherwise it takes some genuine skill to pull complete sentences out of them.
In contrast, women make the entire market research industry tick. They mostly run it, since so many research vendors, field facility managers, and interviewers are women. They are much more likely to be better than men in reaching out to strangers to get their participation, and in the listening skills that are essential to data analysis.
Women are superior respondents too, if only for the fact that they’re far more willing to participate. As many research recruiters will tell you, it’s easier to get women to participate in research. They routinely have to “over sample” to get enough men to show up or participate online.
This difference is not limited to in-person qualitative contexts. In just about every quantitative survey I run, there are several open-ended questions in which the respondent must type in a written answer, instead of clicking on a multiple-choice response or a numbered rating scale. Here again, women outperform men.
Recently I ran an analysis of the average total word counts between male and female respondents on all open-ended questions in all the quant studies I did over the past two years. Women always typed more words in the responses than men. Always. The differences ranged from a low of 4% - 13% more words on simple short-answer questions, to a positively florid 46% more words when asked to give their top-of-mind reactions to a package design.
While men often treat words as if they are very expensive, women have an advantage in a research context beyond a greater willingness and capability to express themselves. Women give more data because they have more data. They are far more likely to have actually considered the topics researchers tend to ask them — Why did you choose that? How did you decide where to shop? — long before being asked.
Women already constantly evaluate and judge their behavior, and the motivations behind that behavior, of their own accord. Self-awareness (and the inevitable paralyzing self-doubt that comes with it) is their default state. So, when somebody asks about those things, they’re ready to rock. Men? It’s so easy to see how baffled they are by the same questions; most are simply not in the habit of examining their own behavior and motivations, so how the hell are they supposed to know why they had a burrito instead of a turkey sandwich for lunch last Tuesday?
Women will not only remember having had that burrito, but will recall what was in it, and that they really hadn’t planned on having it in the first place. They had a big breakfast that day, but had already agreed to eat lunch with a friend before they realized that the friend wanted Mexican food. So, they went along with it to be nice, but soon regretted it, because then they felt bloated and had burrito breath all afternoon. It also changed what they were planning to have for dinner that night, which was going to mess with the rest of the week because of the leftovers they had in the fridge they must eat soon. They also resolved to avoid committing to lunch with that friend in the future, because she’s bad news when you’re trying to eat healthier. Besides, they should be saving money by bringing lunch every day. And on and on.
Hermione schools Ron and Harry on the differences between male and female cognitive range
This starts to explain the differences in brand perception and buying behavior between those customers who may be male or female, but given a specific context, think like a stereotypical man or a woman.
Here's an example: a majority of hard-core Star Trek and Star Wars fans are men (hence the usually derogatory label of fanboy). These are of course both tremendously popular franchises, with millions of casual fans of both genders. But those fanboys behave like stereotypical women when they use their encyclopedic recall to get caught up in the minutiae of whether or not the details in the newest installment of either franchise is consistent with every other detail of the past 30 - 50 years of stories. That is, they’re caught up in the Brand Story details. Everybody else in the movie’s potential audience acts like a stereotypical man, primarily concerned with the actual core Value Proposition: “Is this movie any good? Is it fun and exciting in a vaguely Star Trek or Star Wars way?”
Neither franchise can afford to ignore the detail-oriented way their hard core fans appreciate them, but there’s only so many of those people out there. They need buy-in from both the nerds and the, well, normal people at the same time in order to make a profit on a $200 million+ production budget. Creating a product that satisfies both camps is a really rare skill, and that’s why J.J. Abrams made so much money directing the re-boots of both of those franchises.
Buying behavior is driven by a core Value Proposition. That Value Proposition is put into a usage and competitive context by the Brand. Enthusiasm is driven by the Brand. The Brand tells the story behind the Value Proposition that gives it all meaning and relevance. Linking those elements effectively means tapping into your own inner J.J. Abrams every day.
Think of the GEICO value proposition: “Save 15% or more on car insurance.” That really isn’t all that Earth-shattering, is it? But it’s simple, and sets the bar low enough that they can deliver on it consistently.
But think of how the GEICO brand has run with that simple Value Proposition. Their fun, endlessly creative spins on the same core message differentiated an otherwise lackluster positioning, and shook up the entire industry in the process. Beyond just being entertaining, the backstory also fills in all the necessary detail involved in selling insurance, so it’s there if you need it for reassurance. It works from both a superficial or detailed perspective, and that’s the key.
The challenge is that to be successful, both the male and female patterns need to be reconciled simultaneously. On its own, a simple Value Proposition runs the risk of being undifferentiated versus its competition. It has clarity but no intrigue. Meanwhile, without a clear, succinct Value Proposition attached to it, a beautifully intricate Brand Story risks achieving little more than supplying its audience with plenty of potentially deal-breaking details.
So, give this approach a try. First, see if you are even able to separate what constitutes your product’s Value Proposition, and what is its Brand Story. Once you do that, make sure that there’s some good chemistry between them. Next, be sure that the Value Proposition is so simple, a stereotypical man would get it and actually remember it 15 minutes later. Then look at the Brand Story. Is there enough juicy detail in there worthy of a stereotypical woman’s power to scrutinize it? Is there true compatibility there? Can they both be happy together for the long run?
If so, congratulations to the happy couple! Go forth and multiply. If not, it’s time to call in a counselor. I can be reached at (415) 577-1053.