:: adgruntie :: Missing the target

+ Somewhat funny timing for this piece from Business Week, after yesterday's post on "pink" advertising/marketing.
Written by employees at 3iYing, an all-female market and design strategy firm, it discusses how advertisers often miss the mark when trying to speak to girls. They make some good points. One part I did find odd is that the writers claim they are the demographic but they aren't teens. They do their job to target teen girls (15 to 25)but are all their employees (why it took 7 of them to write that one piece is also something I find troubling)under 25? I guess it's possible.

Either way, the point that many advertisers don't get WHO they are talking to is a problem. No matter who that target audience is.

And actually it's one thing that I noticed in the buzz going around for Anheuser Busch's Super Bowl ad campaigns. In this article, Marlene Coulis, who was promoted to marketing head for AB in August, says this refreshing quote:

"If there's a new piece of insight I brought to our agencies it's that we have a lot of female beer drinkers, a lot of coed beer-drinking situations," Ms. Coulis said yesterday during an interview in Midtown Manhattan.

"They love beer," Ms. Coulis said of the women who consume an estimated 20 percent of the company's beer volume. "And they're influencers, they have influence over brand choice," she added, "so we want to make sure we equally appeal to males and females."

Thank you Ms. Coulis. It's about bloody time someone noticed! :)