The 9th Annual M2W: Marketing to Women Conference was held at the Chicago Cultural Center April 16-17, featuring a bevy of experts and keynoters who know a little – okay, a lot – about marketing to women.
Guest Emcee Pepper Miller, president, The Hunter-Miller Group, and author of Black (Still) Matters in Marketing, presided over the two-day conference, introducing guest speakers who discussed a variety of topics including marketing myths, cultural advertising and women as more than just a ‘niche’ in the consumer world.
Regular TCW contributors Bridget Brennan, CEO, Female Factor, and author of Why She Buys, and Marti Barletta, founder, The TrendSight Group, and author of Marketing to Women and PrimeTime Women, offered insights during the second day of the conference. TCW had a front row seat to their presentations.
Ms. Brennan took the stage first, discussing women’s influence in consumerism, especially from a familial standpoint. “We often hear that women are so busy and don’t have time to do anything,” she observed. “But what is the real implication here? Women are getting married later in life and taking their children with them everywhere. So children are side by side with their moms, in the same places and consuming the same products and brands.” To sum it up, when you please women, you can stretch your brand across an entire household of consumers.
Later, Ms. Barletta took us to unfamiliar territory, interviewing Gemma Cernuda-Canelles, founder/CEO of the first Spain-based marketing to women company, Peix & Co. Her new, controversial book Ellas Deciden… (Pero Ellos Todavía Mandan), to be published later this year, is making headlines as the title loosely translates to Women Decide…But Men Run the Business. She went on to say, “When it comes to big brands, the one who design and decide are men, and they put their masculine values and politics into marketing.”
Mark your calendars! Next year’s 10th Annual M2W Conference will take place April 29-30, 2014.
