Faith Popcorn

If men and women are different, why do we market to them in the same way?

Faith Popcorn, co-author of EVEolution: The Eight Truths of Marketing to Women, contends that women have always connected differently with products and services than men. Why do companies persist in marketing to men mainly? For instance, traditional bricks-and-mortar retail establishments and airline companies are especially unEVEolutionary.

As a trend strategist, Popcorn applies her insight regarding cultural and business trends to help clients such as McDonald's and Procter & Gamble define new areas of business opportunity. She is frequently interviewed and cited in the mainstream media, and is perhaps best known for The Popcorn Report: Faith Popcorn on the Future of Your Company, Your World, Your Life, which has been published in more than 12 languages.

washingtonpost.com: Welcome to the washingtonpost.com Live Online series. Joining us today is trend forecaster Faith Popcorn. Please submit your questions now.

washingtonpost.com: Faith Popcorn has made her reputation as a futurist, a trend-spotter and a cultural detective. EVEolution is the truth about marketing to women. It's about the difference between building healthy brands and profitable relationships with women. It offers insight into how to tap into the female market. The message is women don't buy brands, they join them. Can you start by explaining that last part – women ‘join’ a brand?

Faith Popcorn: Women look behind the corporate veil to see what the brand essence is, who's running the brand, what the brands stands for. They look beyond the actual product to see if it's a company they can feel comfortable with.

washingtonpost.com: Explain the indirect approach. There has been some notable discussion in advertising circles about which commercials register more with one gender over the other. Seems men prefer quirkier ads while women identify more with direct detailed ads. What’s your opinion?

Faith Popcorn: Truth number 4. Market to her peripheral vision and she will see you in a whole new light. It says that women don't like to be sold in an agressive and straightforward way. The messages that they believe are the messages that come to them from the side and sometimes incidentally what lightbulbs are used in a good art gallery.

NY, NY: How scientific are your trend analyses? Do you use any regression analysis or other method of analysing some hard numbers?

Faith Popcorn: We interview 6000 consumer globally every year, now for 25 years. We have a TalentBank of 6000 experts from all over the planet who are also interviewing management from the fortune 1000 companies, reading 300 publications a month and generally "brailing" the culture.

NYC: In your book you state that, "Women buy 80 percent of the product and control 80 percent of the money." How did you come to this figure? Also I agree with you in part, women it seems do most of the shopping, but did you take into account that the husband’s decision and input is integral? Know my wife makes most of the day to day and major purchases but we rarely do so without consulting each other first.

Faith Popcorn: Women are spending $4.4 trillion mostly without getting anybody else's opinion. They make 80% of the health care decisions, influence 80% of the car buying decisions and actually buy over 50% of the cars with their own checks. This year, more women and men are on the et and are opening businesses and are opening at twice the rate of men and generating $3.4 trillion. Perhaps in your household there are lots of consultation, but most households are female-run with no male present.
Another interesting fact is that 40% of households with $600,000 plus are run by women.

Wash, DC: This question isn't directly related to women. If you were an adviser to Ford CEO Jac Nasser, what advice would you give him?

Faith Popcorn: Jac Nasser needs to observe the eighth truth of EVEolution - everything matters; you can't hide behind your logo. They need to admit to prior knowledge of the problem. They need to not ask women to drive their cars (the majority of Explorer owners are female) but come to that woman's "driveway" and do it for them. They need to put a female in a position of marketing power in the company to communicate the message. It will be a long road back.

A fan in Chicago: Can you discuss the notion of Web usage among women? I understand women actually dominate the web in terms of number and time spent online. However the Post did an article a while back about how online retail is actually geared towards the men shop and that trying to tailor it towards women is difficult because technology doesn't allow you touch fabrics, sample food or other actions typical of women shoppers. Your thoughts.

Faith Popcorn: Women on the Internet are observing the first truth of EVEolution - connecting your female consumers to each other connects them to your brand. This means that the Internet allows women to talk about a brand, to compare notes on a brand and in our research this is more important to them than actually touching the fabric. I believe that catalogs have proven that women don't actually need to touch it in order to buy it.

VA: Hi Faith, I heard that you recently became a mom. Congrats! Do you plan to wind down a bit with your career? Thanks - another working mom.

Faith Popcorn: I recently adopted a little Chinese girl named g.g. She's really connected me to marketplace and to other mom's in a much deeper way. I've certainly learned the meaning of truth number 2 - if you're marketing to one of her lives you're missing all the others. The modern woman leads the work and home life at the same time. That's the news an marketers have to understand that they are often marketing to a woman with a child at her side. This experience has made my career richer and my day longer.

Baltimore: Can you talk about your involvement with the city of Baltimore? I understand they hired you for a marketing campaign of some sort.

washingtonpost.com: This is an interesting question. Your expertise is in branding. Can you really brand a city?

Faith Popcorn: Yes, you can brand a city, especially a city as fabulous as Baltimore. Stay tuned.

washingtonpost.com: I assume Tom Peters must have been an influence on you. He raised some of the issues you talk about in The Circle of Innovation.

Faith Popcorn: Tom Peters is a brilliant marketer and an honest man; he gives us full credit for the concept of EVEolution.

dc: Do you think marketing efforts towards women are getting better or worse?

Faith Popcorn: The reason I wrote (with Lys Marigold) EVEolution is I think that marketing to women is getting more confused. There is a lot of resistance to accepting the fact that men and women are different an the extrapolation of that fact that if we're different we have to be marketed to differently. The Eight Truths of EVEolution lays out a model for what I believe would be the perfect and most exact way to capture the female market.

Nassau, Texas: As a long time investor in Revlon, where do you see this company headed.? Can they turn it around? Will Perlman have to go? Can a brand so battered be rescued and restored?

Faith Popcorn: The last chapter of EVEolution is titled 'Revlon, Reborn.' I applied each of the Eight Truths to this tarnished brand. I believe that even a brand as battered as Revlon can be EVEolutionized. We are currently having conversations with Jeff Nugent the CEO of Revlon. Hopefully together we can restore this brand to its former glory.

washingtonpost.com: Who are some of your corporate clients?

Faith Popcorn: In EVEolution each of the Eight Truths has an example of one of our corporate clients who leveraged it. Some of our clients include Nabsico, McDonalds, Jiffy Lube, GE Capital, Hasbro, Procter & Gamble and Bell Atlantic.

Washington, DC: There is a lot of talk about the number of women in MBA programs. Last I heard is that the are outnumbering men. What kinds of shifts in corp america do you see as a direct result of this?

Faith Popcorn: The major shift I'm seeing in corporate America is many women with and without MBAs are leaving to start their own companies. Interestingly heir husbands or significant others are joining them. I recently designed Faith Popcorn's Home Office Cocoon with the Hooker Furniture Co. to accommodate the way women work. It has a higher work platform because women work with their legs crossed. It has a place to put a picture of your child. It comes with a companion children's desk, has a built-in vase like the Volkswagen. It has a small velvet box so your earrings don't get lost when answering the phone. And because it recognizes they way women work, it is doing better than we ever dreamed.

Arlington, VA: Hello! On a recent flight, I saw an ad for a computer services company in a national mainstream business magazine that promised "seamless" service and used--no lie!-- a pair of women's legs in high-heeled shoes to illustrate it, obviously playing on the "seamless stocking" approach. I realize many tech things have a supposed 98% male audience, but I would have figured that with the number of women in the working world, such ads would be passe. I for one, will never do business with this company because of this ad...and I'm not female. I think a company that uses such an ad is doing itself a major disservice.

Faith Popcorn: I'm always happy to see that this kind of advertising is offensive to a man as well. I think that you'll see the numbers predict women will be as technically evolved as men and the managements of technological companies will become more EVEolutionary. Look at Carly Fiorina at HP.

Washington, DC: What kinds of challenges have you faced being a woman consultant.

Faith Popcorn: I think it's a tremendous advantage being a female consultant. There are so few of us, yet men - especially in power positions - are certainly more comfortable sharing their "problems" and dreams with women.

Great Falls, VA: Just curious about how you got started. I've heard a lot about you and wanted to know your background. thanks

Faith Popcorn: I started as creative director and copywriter in an advertising agency and it was there that I realized that it takes more than advertising to create a brand. It takes a strategic vision of the future.
My childhood was spent sitting with my grandfather in front of his haberdashery store on 5th St. and 2nd Ave. in Manhattan (now the chic East Village) rearranging the windows when not enough customers came in. Thus I learned that "positioning" could be everything.

washingtonpost.com: That brings us to the end of our discussion with Faith Popcorn. Thank you to her and our users for participating in our discussion.