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THE AMI NATIONAL AWARDS FOR MARKETING EXCELLENCE 44

Why women make better marketers than men

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Iteach the brand management elective on the MBA program at Melbourne

Business School. Each week we explore case studies of companies, both in

Australia and abroad. It’s the classic business school approach - learn by

exploring the decisions and approaches of senior managers and let those

insights guide your own future strategies. But one of the most common

observations that keeps coming up has nothing to do with strategy and

everything to do with gender. In a remarkable number of case studies female

marketers seem to out-perform their male counterparts. It’s become almost a

running joke in some of my classes. Senior male marketer produces an average or

horrible marketing result. Female marketer repeatedly delivers a superior

marketing approach.

It might be something you have noticed too. Chances are the most senior

and best paid member of your marketing team is a man. But it’s equally likely the

best marketer in your team is a woman. If I list the top 10 marketers I have

worked with over the past decade the list of women outnumbers the men even

though the vast majority of my clients were male.

Why are women apparently the superior marketing sex? It’s easy to use the

usual offensive stereotypical explanations: women like softer subjects like

WHY WOMEN MAKEBETTER MARKETERSWhen it comes to marketing, women haveconsiderably more skill, potential and overallvalue to an organisation, says Mark Ritson.

Mark Ritson

14 | PROFESSIONAL MARKETING | January–March 2009

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January–March 2009 | PROFESSIONAL MARKETING | 15

marketing and are good at design and packaging. Fortunately, recent advances

in the knowledge of male and female brain functions provides a far more robust

explanation for the fairer sex’s superiority in marketing. To put it bluntly, women

have a massive genetic advantage when it comes to marketing: their brains are

better designed for it.

BUILT FOR EMPATHYImagine walking into a laboratory and finding two human brains. One male, one

female. It would not be hard to identify which is which. The male brain is about

10% larger than the female brain and has 5% more brain cells. That sounds like

good news for men but in terms of pound-for-pound processing, the female

brain more than makes up for its disparity in size in other ways.

For starters, women’s brains are the default for all of us. For the first eight

weeks of our existence in the womb we all have a female brain. Then genes and

sex hormones take over. In the case of boys, a huge surge in foetal testosterone

results in the destruction of cells in the communication centres of the brain and

the growth of cells in the sex and aggression centres. Meanwhile the female

fetus, devoid of the surge in male hormones, continues to grow unaltered.

The results are drastically different brains. Women’s brains emerge as superior

organs for communication and emotional understanding. From an early age girls

display much greater sensitivity to the suffering of others than boys and in adult

life have a far greater ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of others.

Baby girls, as young as 12 months old, respond more empathetically to the

distress of other people. When asked to judge when someone might have said

something potentially hurtful, girls score higher than boys from the age of seven

years old. Women are also more sensitive to facial expressions. They are better at

decoding non-verbal communication, picking up subtle nuances from tone of

voice or facial expression, or judging a person’s character.

In contrast, men struggle with the challenge of understanding others. One

recent study from Cambridge University has shown a link between the amount

of testosterone a boy receives in the womb and his inability to establish eye

contact with others as a small boy. The inference is that men, having had their

brains bathed in testosterone for seven months, are much less able to establish

an understanding and connection with others.

There is, perhaps, no greater skill for a marketer than empathy. While the

media and outsiders tend to perceive marketing as a matter of spin and

persuasion, the reality has always been very different. Marketing is fundamentally

a challenge of understanding. Yes, later on we create advertising and packaging

and other rhetorical tools, but the first and foremost issue for marketers is to

understand their consumer and bring that understanding into the organisation.

Without this basic empathy for the target market our marketing efforts are

probably going to be in vain. Women’s brains are, quite literally, better at

understanding others. Male marketers are more likely to make the crucial error of

assuming their own thoughts and reactions can be extrapolated to that of the

market. Female marketers are more likely to get inside the head of the market

and base their strategies around the real needs of consumers.

BETTER FOR MARKET RESEARCHIf we were to cut a brain in half we would discover a large mass of fibres

connecting the right and left hemisphere of the brain. This connective pathway is

known as the corpus collosum. It is made up of more than 200 million nerve

fibres and acts as a super-highway between the two sides of the brain. The two

hemispheres of the brain offer very different types of processing. The right side of

“To put it bluntly, women have amassive genetic advantage when it comes to marketing: their brains are better designed for it.”





the brain is associated with more holistic and intuitive thinking, while the left side

is typically concerned with more logical and analytical functions.

In marketing, and especially in market research, there is a clear demand

for both types of thinking in order to be

successful. Marketers need to be able to use

both qualitative and quantitative research in

combination to generate insights from the

market. If a marketer just uses qualitative

research, the results are fuzzy and

unrepresentative and should never be used

as the exclusive basis for any marketing

strategy. Other marketers are equally

compromised by relying exclusively on

quantitative data, a major internet panel

survey for example, to understand the

market. The problem with quantitative

research is that it may measure precisely the

response of the market but only to the

options presented by the researcher. The analysis might provide strong statistical

data that variable A is more attractive than variable B, but what if variable C,

which was not included in the questionnaire, was the most important one?

The secret of great market research has always been to start with qualitative

research first and then use the inductive insights that are generated in a more

deductive, quantitative subsequent piece of research. It’s a simple lesson but one

that evades many senior marketers who appear content to use either qualitative

or quantitative research.

Here, again, the female brain is in a superior position. Most studies of the

brain have concluded that women have a larger corpus callosum than men and

therefore show a more bilateral representation of function which decreases

specialisation but integrates the two halves better. Put more simply, women are

able to combine and integrate their thinking between the intuitive challenge of

great qualitative research (understanding what is important for the consumer) and

the analytical challenge of quantitative work (measuring how important the

variables are). In contrast, male marketers are more likely to use one approach or

the other and thus fail to generate superior marketing insights.

BETTER FOR BRANDSOne of the biggest challenges in branding is ensuring you understand the unique

challenges associated with each and every brand. Every brand is different, literally,

from the rest. That's the reason that a brand is the opposite of a generic. You

cannot take the strategies and approaches that have worked for one brand and

apply them to another and expect to be successful. Each brand has a distinct

brand equity, different market segments and contrasting reasons for purchase.

One of the biggest mistakes a marketer can make is apply general rules to very

specific brands.

One of the most pronounced differences between men and women is in the

way that each sex processes information. The differences are clear from

childhood. If you ask girls and boys to draw a picture, the girls’ drawings are

much more detailed and focus in on specific elements of what they are drawing

part by part. Boys, in contrast, tend to use more sweeping lines and less detail.

The differences stem from the male and female brain. Women are much more

likely to delve into the intricacies and specific details of a problem. Men, in

contrast, are more likely to rely on global rules and generalised principles.

These differences would present themselves very clearly with two marketers,

one male, one female, put in charge of a big brand. The male brand manager is

likely to review his previous experiences and successes to understand his new

brand and apply existing rules and strategies that he has found to work elsewhere

on the new brand strategy. The female brand manager is better able to bracket

her past experiences and to understand the current brand and its unique

elements and features. She can rely on her extra levels of empathy to understand,

from the consumer’s perspective, what makes the new brand so powerful. She

can take those insights and formulate a superior, more appropriate brand strategy

than her male colleague.

BETTER AT BRAND POSITIONINGAnother key distinction between the male and female brain is the way we

approach problems. Women’s perceptual skills are oriented to quick, intuitive

thinking. Men construct rules-based analyses of the natural world, inanimate

objects and events. According to Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-

Cohen, Ph.D., they systemise. That’s the reason boys are more interested in cars,

trucks, planes, building blocks, and mechanical toys - systems. Baron-Cohen

demonstrated the differences between the genders in a recent experiment in

which one-year-olds were exposed to two screens - one showing films of cars

(mechanical systems) and the other of a person’s face (emotional expression). The

boys spent longer looking at the cars, the girls focused on the face.

In adulthood this presents another key problem for male marketers and

another big advantage for female marketers. Perhaps the toughest challenge in

branding is articulating a clear positioning statement for the brand. In 10 years of

consulting I have seen a plethora of brand positioning attempts - and most have

been amazingly bad. One of the main reasons for the lack of traction for a brand

positioning is that it is too long and complex. Anything more than three words to

define the essence of a brand renders the result pointless.

Again, you can see the sexual advantage that female marketers have. They

don’t fall in love with bells and whistles; they take a more holistic and articulate

view. If I could gather all the brand positioning statements across Australia I bet

you that all the super-complex triangles and wheels come from male marketers

and the tighter three word definitions mostly derive from their female peers.

MORE ATTUNED TO THE COMPETITIONAnother important challenge that faces marketers is competition. We must

identify the key competitors in the market and devise strategies against them.

Ironically, the reason for female superiority in this area stems from two things that

men are superior at: focus and aggression.

The most noticeable difference between the male and female brain is the

amount of grey matter. Recent studies suggest that females have about 20%

CONTINUES ON PAGE 18

“The female brand manager is betterable to bracket her past experiencesand to understand the current brandand its unique elements and features.”

THE HEMISPHERES OF THE BRAIN OFFERDIFFERENT TYPES OF PROCESSING.





more grey matter proportionate to their brains than males. Grey matter, made up

of the bodies of nerve cells and their connecting dendrites, is where the brain’s

heavy lifting is done. The female brain is more densely packed with neurons and

dendrites, providing processing power and more thought-linking capability. Male

brains are filled with more white matter. White matter, made of the long arms of

neurons encased in a protective film of fat, helps distribute processing throughout

the brain. It gives males superiority at spatial reasoning. White matter also carries

fibres that inhibit “information spread” in the cortex. That allows a single-

mindedness that spatial problems require, especially difficult ones. The tougher

the challenge, the more the male brain can exclude other things and focus.

Another key difference between men and women is the degree of aggression

they exhibit. Researchers at the

University of Pennsylvania claim they

have evidence that shows there is a

physiological reason for why men are

more aggressive than women. Their

research indicates men are more

aggressive than women because the

part of the brain that modulates

aggression, the frontal area around the

eyes, is smaller in men than it is in

women. Both genders have the same

ability to produce emotions, but men

struggle to keep those emotions in

check as much as women.

Combining these two differences together with evolution provides us with

the perfect hunter. A man who can stoke up aggression easily and who can focus

that aggression on a particular target to the exclusion of all else. But in marketing,

this is exactly the kind of response to competition that can lead to disaster. Too

often, marketers fail to see the true competitive set because they remain fixated

on a single competitor that they deem to be their main threat. Nokia’s current

woes, for example, partly stem from their inability to see Google and Apple

encroaching because the Finnish firm was too focused on its existing, classic

competitor Ericsson.

Female marketers with their more contextual understanding of the market

and a cooler head are more likely to properly recognise the true competitive set

and to alter that set as the challengers change. It’s a vital advantage to have over

male colleagues who are likely to pick a single, obvious adversary and then devote

their attentions and the market budget accordingly.

WOMEN DON’T TALK AS MUCH ABOUT THEMSELVESWomen are considerably less ego-centric than men and talk less about themselves

in public settings. The classic male leader is exemplified by Jack Welch or Steve

Gates. Men who like to get onto the centre of the stage and speak for the brand.

In reality the CEO is rarely the best person to represent the brand in front of

the media or the consumers. Female marketers are more likely to avoid the centre

stage and allow the right spokesperson to represent the brand to consumers.

Take Rose-Marie Bravo, the fantastically successful CEO of Burberry. In 10

years at the helm of the British luxury brand Bravo gave virtually no interviews.

Instead she hired a young British designer, Christopher Bailey, as creative director

and let him represent the brand to the media.

It’s an approach most male marketers struggle with. They seek the limelight

and see press and PR releases as a natural place for them to step forward.

Founders of the brand or the people who actually make the products are

usually much better received by the media and generate better PR. Female

marketers are more likely to grasp this fact, whereas the male marketer will reach

for their jacket and tie as soon as the words “press launch” are mentioned.

WOMEN’S BRAINS AGE BETTERWomen have one final cognitive advantage - they enjoy faster blood flow to the

brain and this offsets the cognitive effects of aging. Men lose more brain tissue

with age, especially in the left frontal cortex, the part of the brain that thinks

about consequences and provides self-control. Researchers at the University of

Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine observed tissue loss by the mid-40s in men

while women’s brains remain untouched by the ravages of age. This means that

as a male marketer passes 45, his ability to control emotions and impulses

gradually declines.

The implications for marketers and managers should be obvious. Most people

reach their most senior and influential position within an organisation in their late

40s and early 50s. The average Australian CEO is 55 and male. Irrespective of their

former glories these men are now likely to be experiencing significant reductions

in their ability to control their impulses just when they need that skill the most.

Women, in contrast, who already had a gender advantage in being able to

control anger better than men will only increase this relative advantage as they

age. Unfortunately, as only six of the current CEOs of the ASX 200 are women, it

is hard to demonstrate the relative advantage a 50-something female CEO has

over her male peers. The sample size is too small.

There are, of course, a couple of important caveats that come with any

argument that women are the superior sex when it comes to marketing. First, it

is not fair to claim that all women are better than all men at marketing. Obviously

we are dealing in the imprecise world of averages and there are some very good

male marketers out there too. Chances are that many of these superior male

marketers will actually possess a brain that has more female traits than the usual

male brain.

It is also important to remember we are exclusively discussing marketing skills.

Just as I hope to have made a persuasive argument that women’s brains make

them better marketers, it would be just as easy to suggest than men’s brains, with

their respective differences, would make them better finance people or logistics

analysts. It's a matter of fit.

But I remain convinced that when it comes to marketing, women have

considerably more skill, potential and overall value to an organisation.

Mark Ritson is an associate professor of marketing at Melbourne Business School and

a consultant for some of the world's leading brands. He is also, sigh, a man.

CONTINUES FROM PAGE 16

“Female marketers are more likely toavoid the centre stage and allow theright spokesperson to represent thebrand to consumers. It’s an approachmost male marketers struggle with.”

WOMEN HAVE ABOUT 20% MORE GREY MATTERPROPORTIONATE TO THEIR BRAINS THAN MEN.


