I pulled an all nighter a few nights ago...not because I had some crazy work deadline or was working on finishing my second novel...I was trying to finish the Valentine gift my son had requested for his classmates. And I had really underestimated how long it was going to take.
After mid-night TV gets weird. And I was happy to find a Law and Order marathon to have on the background while I crocheted until my fingers cramped up. My learning from that night is not how many stuffed giraffes I can make in a 12 hour period (the answer is 11), but that there are few companies willing to advertise that late. Between midnight and 6am I must have seen 20 ads for Vermont Teddy Bears 4 foot tall bear. Also advertising was a company wanting to help me sign up for health care, a company who wanted my husband to buy me roses and Sherries Berries who successfully convinced me I would never want to be friends with a couple who purchased from them.
Except for the health care company who was gender neutral in their ads, everyone else was targeting men. And not subtly. Watch the Vermont Teddy Bear ad (link above) and see what I mean...these were ads that were not meant to appeal to me as a women at all. As a marketer I am intrigued by these types of ads so I did a quick Google search to find out who exactly watches Law and Order...and the whole first page of results came back with articles about how much WOMEN watch the show. And not just the show that runs new episodes, but the re-runs that TNT plays, and that I was watching. If you visit the TNT viewer profile more women watch then men. This makes me question the companies running ads...did they do their research? By excluding an entire gender from their ads they no doubt lost business...Vermont Teddy Bear could have just as easily created that ad to be geared towards both genders, or parents, since the only person I know that wants a 4 foot bear is my 3 year old. And who knows...if they had done that, they probably would have made a 3am sale to me.
