Marketing to women fail.
Posted by: Donna
Furniture Affairs, a local emporium of “gently-used” furnishings wanted to celebrate its 20 years in business and take advantage of consumers looking for bargains in the current recession. My friend Joy sent out an alert to facebook friends about this billboard:
Umm…I guess we’re supposed to take away from this that buying furniture on the cheap is always a good thing whereas the goodness of being a “cheap” woman is situational. When Joy and several others sent messages on facebook asking the company to change their advertising out of respect for women (who make something like 80% of household purchases just so you know) the administrator of the page deleted their posts and “unfriended” them. Joy sent a direct email to them and got the following response:
We love our billboard and think it does everything BUT objectify women. We are a woman owned-women run business and our “Being cheap isn’t always a bad thing” campaign is one that we feel tells three stories. 1) We are turning twenty years old this year. We started in a recession and we are currently in a recession. In such times, people often evaluate their purchasing and want to be more frugal or “cheap”. 2) 1989, the year Furniture Affair was conceived was not a year known for great style and class. Bold and brash, big hair, Peg Bundy and day-glo was the style story of the time. Our desire was to embrace that as well as the fun and carefree feeling of the time in our billboard. 3) The fabulous sofa featured in our ad can be bought for a fraction at our store that you would pay for it at the big, obviously more politically correct stores.
Huh? What, pray tell, is a politically correct furniture store? One that sells furniture to the kind of politically incorrect woman (like Peg Bundy) that you can have for a fraction of the price you’d pay for a politically correct wife (like, I dunno, Claire Huxtable or whats-her-name the mom on Growing Pains)? The 1989 reference is just silly because there’s not any serious nostalgia for that era and why would you want to tie yourself to a time not known for style and class when you’re selling home decor? Plus, once you get into having to explain how your image “works” you’re pretty much in the territory New Yorker cartoonist Sean Delonas was in last summer with the “Obama terrorist fist bump” cover. IOW, it’s a big old satire fail.
I understand they were trying to be fun and kitcshy but Furniture Affair is making the same stupid mistake that many marketers make – being totally oblivious to who your target audience is (women, the majority of the time) and assuming that since “sex sells” all you have to do is put a hot chick in front of your product in a suggestive pose, throw in a double entendre about her sexual availability, and watch the dough-re-me flow in. As a result, a good percentage of advertising and marketing out there looks like it’s hawking beer to frat boys. It unnecessarily causes girls and women to internalize some rather potent messages about how we’re supposed to look and what we are valued for. It also demonstrates how a lot of people in marketing take the lazy, too-easy route of perpetuating gender stereotypes instead of making an attempt to understand their customer base. It’s idiotic.
And speaking of idiots, the people who take the prize have got to be PETA. Several years ago they had some modest success with their “I’d rather be naked than wear fur” campaign. Okay, I’ll grant that is was a clever juxtaposition of fashion models with the anti-fur message. In the intervening years PETA has launched a series of insulting and embarrassing publicity stunts featuring Hot Naked Babes, or occasionally making fun of overweight women. They’ve received numerous complaints and their response to them is invariably dismissive. You’d think they’d realize that feminists could be natural allies to their movement and would be making a concerted effort to build a bridge with us, but no, they continue to pursue the eyes and approval of Teh Dudez. Yet, oddly enough, I haven’t noticed frat boys going vegan en masse.
Finally, enough with invoking the tired “political correctness” canard when someone confronts your inconsiderate behavior. There’s not a whole lot of actual “political correctness” out there but there are a whole lot of people using the concept to repackage the same old bigotry as something fresh and rebellious. Frankly, the people I’ve observed demanding actual political correctness most often – as in treating them with kid gloves, not challenging their beliefs, according them automatic respect while letting them say whatever they want about you – are to be found at the Tea Parties. But that’s a subject for another post.
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1989, the year Furniture Affair was conceived was not a year known for great style and class. …..etc.
Oh my, this kitty just about got squashed by this lead balloon. First you make fun of the time of the “ahem” older customers who could afford but now won’t buy your furniture, then you say you want to “embrace the fun and carefree feeling of the time.” Can’t have it both ways. .
How can a furniture store be PC? Do they vote?
There is a reason Wal-Mart is so effing successful for getting women to be loyal to them-they know how to market to women without being insulting.
Great post, Donna. You can usually count on the fact that most insulting, off-target ads are created by men given that only 3% of the creative directors at ad agencies are women. (By the way, Wal-Mart has some very smart women creative directors/writers working on their behalf from smart ad agencies –which is why their work is so effective) I hate to see when women-owned businesses with good intentions miss the mark. I think many small businesses make the mistake of only asking their circle of friends for feedback on ads like these, and therefore never know that their intended message was lost in translation:) A shame since small biz dollars for advertising need to be an extra smart spend:)
The concept of “furnature from former relationships” is a very cute play on words… but the visual and statement about being cheap when all the pictures are of women (there are no “cheap men” in their ads for example” really troubles me.
I love to support locally owned busniness especially ones owned by women – My mom was a business owner in my community growing up for years, I was so proud of her… but I just am deeply bothered that they can’t just step back and realize that this makes women look like objects.
Very frustrating. Thank you Joy and Donna for bringing this to my attention since I used to shop there.
Appleblossom:
Which is actually a tragic irony, given that Wal-Mart is one of the worst offenders around.
Several years ago they got hit (and lost) a gender-discrimination lawsuit.
Which goes along with some of their other notorious policies, almost all of which they’ve been sued for, over the years, including:
making workers work on their lunch break and off the clock, sending out a memo on how to get rid of workers just before they reached seven years where they would be eligible for a pension, hiring underage kids and assigning them to perform potentially dangerous tasks, getting caught hiring undocumented workers to clean their floors at night simultaneously in 23 states and paying them as little as $2 an hour, importing stuff made in foreign sweatshops where workers (including children) are routinely abused and have been worked to death, firing a worker in Kingman for just saying the word, ‘union,’ not only paying some workers so poorly that they still had to apply for public assistance but even giving some new employees a food stamp application as ‘benefits,’ doing everything they could to fight having to even have to provide any kind of health care plan,
Most of these things Wal-Mart has been sued over, and in most cases they’ve lost. But they know very well that they make money on it and whatever fine they pay (usually just a ‘we won’t do it again’) will still net them a profit.
Oh my! Yes, you and Joy must be very proud of yourself. Hmmm…let’s see what’s been accomplished here. You have driven a local small businesswoman that has been a huge supporter of local charities and women-focused networking groups into incurring huge costs to feed your egos. Do the research people. A company that has paid taxes for 20 years. A company that has been a supporter of the Moon Valley community for 20 years. One who pays their vendors, employees, and consignors ON TIME and IN FULL unlike other local stores that have been mentioned by name on the facebook thread(ahem-Terri’s). A company that donated thousands to NYC 9/11 Victims relief and tens of thousands of diapers to the Diaper Drive for Homeward Bound. Who helped with the relocation of families rendered homeless by Hurricane Katrina and has spent the last 4 years adopting the Starshine Academy which is a school for underprivileged children for Christmas. But you showed her!
Maybe you could have directed your energy at some more influential targets. How about the Cheetah’s billboard. That girl has a TAIL! And no clothes! Or the Celebrity Tan with the size -0 in an itty bitty bikini on the beach. Better still. Look in InStyle magazine at the new ad for Louis Vuitton or XLXL.com. In this edition of Cosmo the cover articles are BAD GIRL SEX and SEXY ASS WORKOUT-TWO WEEKS TO SWEET CHEEKS. Now mind you if you are talking about body image, not one picture in any of these of the “average” American woman. That size, by the way Joy, is a 14. Not an “8” that you previously “guessed” at. Who is out of touch with reality?
And before she blames Ms Rhodes for the fall from grace of her 9 yr old niece (which I see was promptly deleted) she might want to look at her TV watching habits, her internet usage, her exposure to other girls at school and the most important, haphazard parenting. In order to save young girls from the horrors of the media, perhaps you all could invest your time in her future. The local library has scores of wonderful 18th century literature that you could read with her.
Your point is valid. Your vehicle for ramming that point down the throats of others was a flawed one. Who will really pay that price, Joy and friends? It is a tough economy, most especially for those in retail. Even more specifically for those in the home furnishings business where stores are going under by the dozen. Who pays for that billboard? The support staff that takes a pay cut? The stock guy making $10 an hour that loses his job and can’t support his already strapped household? The consumers? The homebuilders that are already barely holding their heads above water?
If this “campaign” of yours is truly of the educational variety (as you claim), perhaps the greatest lesson will come from you looking within to see why you are so angry with women. If something in your history has damaged you to the point that you can’t see joy or fun or empowerment for women, I will think good wishes for your prompt healing. And I will send everyone I know or have ever met to go see Ms. Rhodes and let her know that we appreciate the message. And that her success and giving back to the community have touched us and we want to support women of strength and character.
Lauren, you go right ahead and tell Ms. Rhodes how much you appreciate her message that women are “cheap”. Everyone is entitled to free speech.
I’m not sure which message you are referring to. The overwhelming message I’m hearing is that Ms Rhodes is smart, dedicated, successful, AND has a sense of humor! It also appears that her furniture store sells designer furniture for CHEAP prices! Of course, that being said, I also didn’t alert the authorities that My Sisters Attic were satan worshippers because of their big, sexy red high heel shoe ad that’s tag line reads “Sell your Sole”. I was able to quickly make the intellectual leap and laugh. Good luck to you on that!