The only way to head into 2009 with a positive mindset is to embrace interconnected, relational thinking.  As a marketer you simply won’t be able to reach consumers if you don’t step back from your fear and tradition-grasping ways.  If you can bring your brain to admit it - circumstances beyond anyone’s control have lead to the following realities:

Interconnected: People are - it seems - suddenly aware of the long term and global implications of what they buy.  They are inclined to wonder how this step they take or purchase they make will affect future generations or even just their nearby neighbors.

Community Aware: People are reaching out to share and care for one another in challenging times.  They realize the emotional value in combining forces and weathering the difficulties together, rather than hoarding or being one-up on their neighbor in order to feel better.

Balanced: People are being forced to balance out their right and left brain thinking.  Thus, they are more fluidly and simultaneously taking in both emotional influences and linear facts and figures.

While consuming will be strongly guided by bottom line price in this recession, of course(!), a new more deliberate shopper will emerge from the ashes.  These new ways of thinking and evaluating purchase will have been deeply embedded in their psyches.  Brands will need to be ready.

There is no short term, band-aid approach to what marketers face right now.  Rather this is the time to look a bit beyond your nose or next quarter’s earnings, and notice how much the average consumer has changed.

This more interconnected, community-aware and balanced brain processing of decisions means that your consumer is thinking more “like a woman” every day.

Yes, we can.  What was it about that phrase that so engaged and inspired voters this past fall?  And, will that attitude be something they bring to their consuming habits in 2009?

Andrea Gardner interviewed me recently on this topic for public radio’s Marketplace Morning Report, and it got me thinking…

What Americans responded to in the Obama campaign was a whole new feeling that the average person might have some influence over larger issues.  Wow! There is something about a sense of one’s own responsibility and the self-empowerment, along with the expectation that others will share in more consciously shaping their own destinies, that can build a mass public movement in a positive country-wide direction.  Oh yes… we can.

And, as with political campaigns, so go ad campaigns.  In the immediate future, fear will no longer drive consumer purchases.  Responsibility and self-empowerment will.  Even and especially in an economic downturn, the 180 degree switch from anxiety to forward self-propulsion has significant implications for how consumers will see and respond to advertising in 2009.

It won’t be about how your product or service can save the day, or how, with the help of your gadget or gizmo, consumers won’t have to worry their pretty little heads.  Instead, we will see more of the “You can do it. We can help.” (Home Depot) type of message.  Or, the tone might follow the pass it along/take responsibility lead of a recent Liberty Mutual Insurance campaign.  And, finally, with a little humor, even the financial industry will find a way to express a “Yes, We Can” tone - as per ING Direct’s current theme -”We, The Savers.”

The voting public was primed for a leadership that sought their collective participation in the larger process.  (When was the last time anyone trusted the general public enough to ask for their help?)  And, that attitude will be shared by the same people as they consume, so much more carefully, in the New Year.

When you think about it fear, a certainly valid emotion, can still be easily leveraged in a very top down/heirarchical way.  Human beings respond by giving away their power or using all their might to keep to their comfort zone.  Responsibility and self-empowerment, on the other hand, are based on a relational, “we are all in this together,” shared sense of possibility.  You can almost feel the shoulders drop and full breath of humanity return.  Given the opening for it, most people engage with and thrive in the latter.

What is both more enjoyable and productive for society holds true for today’s marketplace.  If brands want to succeed in these tough times, they need to participate in and serve the naturally positive propensity of mankind toward a common good.  That means emphasizing the WE in Yes, We Can.

If your work as a marketer is beginning to seriously conflict with your personal views about consuming wisely - you are not alone.  Helping to sell more products - as you envision your friends and neighbors already on tight budgets - just feels wrong.  But there are a few things  in our culture and marketplace today that actually align for those brands that honestly deliver on their promises.

1) The fact that men are perhaps starting to shop a bit more like women means that a greater number of consumers are going beyond simply  linear “buying” toward the more complex paths of “shopping.”  By that I mean, those people are not just buying the first thing they see, but really giving it some thought, weighing their options and trying to be truer to their longer term needs/interests and how the product fits therein.

2) As well, the current poor economy has affected consumers of all income levels (and both genders) to think beyond “buying.”  While bottom line price definitely factors in more strongly at the moment, today’s consuming approach, for men and women, is to make sure the product or service they are about to purchase endures. Making money s-t-r-e-t-c-h takes “shopping,” not “buying” experience.

3)  Finally, consumers are truly forcing the issue of sustainable business practices and brands.  Pre-recession, when they could still, generally, afford to choose more expensive products, shopping minds had long since been dialing in, reading labels and combing corporate websites for the extra information they needed to make a purchase decision.  And so, simple “buying” is not an option for these folks, even now.  Instead, these consumers are driven to spend time “shopping” and more deliberately weighing their choices - seeing the purchase process as an opportunity to let their sustainable interests be heard.

Some marketers may prefer to ignore the elephant in the room, but it’s just too large, gray and scaly (figuratively):  Consumers are purposefully consuming less.  Respecting and serving that careful shopping, not buying, mindset may be the toughest challenge for brands.  But, long term customer relationships that last beyond this recession will be the grand prize.

Get to know the cautious, money-stretching, sustainability-seeking, shopping men and women in your market now.  Buying season is over.

Just what is the future of marketing to women?   It isn’t just a slight building on the same for versions 2.5, 2.75 or 3.0.  Instead, the study of how women buy needs to take a bit of a leap to truly evolve and serve today’s consumers with relevance.  That jump involves lessening the focus on women, per se, but tightening the focus on the science and right brain trait-directed behaviors of all consumers.

Next generation gender insights should help marketers start to notice and leverage the common ground in the male and female buying behavior we are now seeing hints of.  The way women have typically gone about their purchasing process is but the launching pad for how all of a brand’s toughest customers are now starting to go about it.  In my first contribution to the Women-omics* blog, I take a look at three current trends that point to an altogether more right-brain directed consumer:

• New male consumer: he buys skincare and fashion, co-parents and co-manages the household.
• HR/diversity changes: The gender intelligence demanded in corporate settings should lead the way for the same in brand-consumer relationships.
• Frugality/simplicity movement:  We are all in this together.  Commonly left-brain directed concerns of status and positioning are no longer in fashion.  Living a responsible/sustainable life to benefit our own families, the community and future generations has become the priority for women and men.

As I concluded in my Women-omics post:

Of course, marketing to women to the exclusion of men was never the plan – but raising up the topic for examination a decade or more ago certainly and positively re-focused traditionally male-oriented marketers. Yet, at this point in time, consumer and cultural trends beckon us toward a more common ground, less polarized gender perspective – which, in and of itself, might be considered a right brain-guided way of moving forward.

*The Women-omics blog was founded by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, co-author of Why Women Mean Business, as a forum for pulling together international gender discussions in the market, corporate and leadership arenas.

Is yours an industry with years of tradition, unimpeded by progress?  Well, in this economy, progress in what you know about and how you serve your customers simply must take priority.

Home builders, specifically, need to consider the cultural and generational differences of today’s American Dreamer with a new level of gender intelligence.  And, that intelligence should start with an understanding that home buying decisions are now more likely to be made by women.

A recent article by John McManus of Big Builder, for which I was interviewed, laid it out in these terms:

According to the National Association of Realtors, about one in five home buyers is a single woman, and about one in four single women buyers is below the age of 34. This is not a buyer to ignore. Under-34-year-old females, even in today’s dreadful new-home building market, represent a more than $10 billion market segment. As the cohort balloons and the economy improves even gradually over the next five years, the segment will likely explode.

Since home buying consumer trends tend to reflect on household goods purchasing behavior in general, it is all the more important that the progress necessary to reach this important Gen Y female  be “unimpeded” for a  a wide variety of industries - perhaps even yours.

The American Dream 1.0 is unrecognizable and irrelevant to the majority of twenty-first century consumers.  But, today’s Gen Y female should not be unrecognizable to the brands and industries proposing to deliver the Dream in 2.0 form, no matter the industry.

As I described a woman’s thinking at the close of McManus’s article:

“In this economy, they are looking to do more with what they can actually afford—as small as that may be,” says Learned. “It’s not about showing off, but demonstrating they are wise and deliberate about their investment.”

Serving such a woman as if she were yesterday’s home buyer would be a nightmare.

If your agency or marketing department still considers the women’s market an aside, definitely cut it from your budget.  The sooner the better.  On the other hand, if reaching the most influential, “chief household operating” consumer is your goal - such a cut would be marketing suicide.  Do I have you attention now?

When you look around outside your product or clientele silos, you’ll see a few emerging trends which reflect just how critical women’s market intelligence should still be.  These include:

IN BUSINESS - sustainable, or getting there, businesses are attempting to maintain their pre-September momentum.

IN THE MARKETPLACE - a mass consumer market that is giving much more mindful and deliberate consideration to each purchase (toothpaste to cars).

IN CONSUMER BEHAVIOR - an evolving male consumer emerging from this already changing marketplace.

Why should any business focused on sustainable practices stay attuned to how women buy?  Women have been driving the “light” to “dark” green environmental and social responsibility movements all along.  They are the first line of consumers who will make decisions to buy those products or not.

How does the fact that every consumer is getting more deliberate with their purchase process apply to your marketing to women budget?  Women are the ones who learned for themselves and then taught men how and why to demand so much more from the products and services they buy.  Marketers have started to live up to expectations that can’t be reneged.

Now, what about marketing to this male consumer?  Aren’t we talking about women?  Yes.  The reality is that all the budget you put into better serving women’s ways of buying is now also reaching a new more right-brain type of consuming man.  A recent Datamonitor study showed that 8 out of 10 male consumers believe health and personal appearance are important.  This should speak volumes not only to those particular industries but to anyone tracking a general shift in what and how men buy.

And, whether it is obvious or not, the marketing to women expertise you pay for is very much still worth it.  It is simply, and literally, insight-full marketing. If we could go back in time and call the field “marketing to the new extremely demanding customer,” would that be a line item to cut in a bad economy?  I think not.

If the “women” part of the label is what calls into question your marketing to women budget - you have my permission to call it something new.  The study of gender trends and culture actually fits very very well into the “insightful marketing” department.  Wouldn’t all brands and agencies maintain a healthy budget for that, even in a recession?

What an industry or brand thinks is “female-friendly” and what really is, may be two different things.  When we read about a company that is what I’ll now call “ff,” it’s mainly that they proclaimed themselves so, or held all-women promotional events, or were the first to show women, front and center, in their ad campaigns.  Wouldn’t the term for that actually be female-presumptive (aka “fp”)?

That is not to say that women don’t respond to “ff” to a degree.  However, if it were really a friendly investment in women, a brand’s strategy would have substance, from product design forward, and go much beyond public relations in serving female-specific ways of buying.

So - who defined “ff” marketing originally?  Perhaps a few decision-making men in a room of some brand in a traditional industry who wished it to be the case.  With friends like that…

The truth is that brand’s can no more claim to be female-friendly than they can claim to be male-friendly.  Only their customers and the fact that they return time and again, and refer friends, can point to the real value of such friendship, and it probably won’t be segmented down perfectly gender-specific lines (sorry to make things hard on researchers).

Anyway.. take the case of Saturn:  As I wrote in a recent post, I’m a fan of their initial approach and yes, it was very effective with women, in particular.  However, I take issue with a comment in this recent article that Honda, despite being less “female-friendly,” is more successful with women than Saturn.  If women are  buying a lot of its products, shouldn’t that brand, by definition, be considered a true friend?  Honda may not presume their female-friendliness, but their business practices simply make it so.

And… sure enough, Honda has lots of male “friends” too (but I digress).

Certainly, Honda has not gotten as much press as Saturn has about how well their programs speak to women.  Nor, have they very visibly done “women’s” events or promotions - as may have been the case with Saturn in the early days.   But, it’s what Honda is doing transparently, or in the background, that serves women so well.  Women wouldn’t buy the brand if they didn’t find the cars fit their specific practical/functional and design desires, that the customer experience was good, and that the marketing messages were relevant to their lives.

Honda and Saturn could both be defined as female-friendly for the variety of reasons that women tend(ed) to want to own them.  But, maybe the lesson is in looking closely at the one that endures:  the company that functioned in a female-friendly way without forcing the point.

Do gift-giving occasions inspire “doghouse” dread for men because they feel so unlikely to make the right choice?  And, will women only settle for diamond jewelry - even when the vacuum cleaner their mate has bought them has dual bags?

Bewareofthedoghouse, the much-shared video/mini-site promoting JC Penney diamond jewelry demonstrates that even cutting humor, with high quality video production and online viral appeal can’t always do the marketing trick.  Even more, it is an odd approach for a store that otherwise offers so many more gift options through an established, inclusive, cheerful and friendly brand message.

Before I go to far, here’s the gist of the video:

It tells the story of a man guilty of giving his wife/girlfriend the wrong gift for their anniversary, and the trouble that ensues. In all her irritation, she walks him over, and demands he crawl into the doghouse in their backyard. In Alice in Wonderland style, the poor sap then finds himself falling into a heap of laundry other men are folding inside a cold, dimly lit, cement cellar. Turns out, they each, as well, missed the mark with gifts for their sweeties, and have been trying to get out of the doghouse ever since. But , it is a difficult thing to do - and diamond jewelry seems the only answer.

The men all appear to be simpletons who just don’t understand their wives/girlfriends, and the women are all depicted as materialistic “witches” who will not stand for this lack of diamond-giving awareness.

It is worth noting that only the seriously marketing-related types of men and women I unscientifically polled last week actually explored the site enough to find the JC Penney jewelry reference.  The video’s length kept a lot of people from watching all the way to the end or digging around on the site beyond that viewing.  From what I gathered, and marketing perspective aside, the doghouse story elicited a knowing chuckle, a groan of recognition or the general feeling of being insulted.

Hmmm. This attempt at modern humor, seems to be more exclusionary than inclusive.   While the humor and gender stereotype jokes in this video might be hip and sophisticated for some, they are also extremely polarizing for others.  And, with a message of only diamond jewelry or doghouse - there can be no wiggle room for even the average JC Penney customer, let alone a new one.

This particular doghouse message misses a huge opportunity to offer up more Penney’s-inspired gift ideas, especially in a time of cutbacks where diamonds, at any reasonable cost, are still too much of a luxury. Finally, in the long run, the snarky humor never redeems itself - which could have softened the blow.  There is not a single reference to the possibility of love (either from the man or woman’s side).

Bewareofthedoghouse, in all its cleverness and tight production, seems too narrowly targeted on a very specific younger man at a singular point in time.  He relates to the humor and definitely sees himself with a gorgeous woman.  But, is he really someone who’s got any familiarity with the communication anxieties of significant gift-giving?  Will this make him head to JCP’s jewelry department?

The sweetspot for both storybook romance and clever humor in an effective marketing campaign is difficult to find. That may be why so few brands even attempt it.  This doghouse tale, entertaining as it may be for some, fails to reach the men and women most likely to even consider giving or receiving jewelry as opposed to a warm, stylish, winter coat.  All the moreso in this especially difficult gift-giving season.

Now … for those of you who may need legitimate help buying gifts for your significant other, consider this “he says/she says” chart from The Frisky blog, organized by relationship age.  Many thoughtful options, no doghouse.

The American automobile industry situation is indeed tragic, and at this point there is not much more to say. Still, I had always held out hope for the original Saturn “way.” That GM brand’s initial concept and launch is a great example of serving car customers “in a woman’s way.” Through its more inclusive, community-oriented (of auto workers, salespeople and owners) and softer sell approach (was it Saturn that made the no-dicker sticker price famous?), the brand spoke a whole new language.

Now, it seems, the automobile industry was already too entrenched in its traditional ways in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and may not have committed to the core Saturn message for long enough. As Micheline Maynard writes for the New York Times:

True believers in Saturn insist the concept behind the division, which stressed respect, teamwork and communication from the factory floor to the auto showroom, could have kept G.M. from losing nearly half the market share it held when the first Saturns went on sale 18 years ago.

“I’m absolutely convinced that the Saturn way could have worked,” said Michael Bennett, the original U.A.W. leader at Saturn. “But what we had was never embraced or adopted.”

***

Saturn’s story was a good one, and, in fact, their marketing efforts were great at leveraging story altogether (remember the ads showing how the owners and employees had reunion picnics together in Tennessee?). They also attempted, if not committed, to a management style that was more inclusive/lateral/participatory. Saturn, at first, delighted and surprised consumers, and made its buyers feel like part of something bigger… even a “movement.” And, all those things reflected a more holistic way of thinking and looking at the world, and a deeper understanding of how and why people buy.

Business just couldn’t quite get there, back then. There was no emergency situation or catastrophe compelling them to explore such innovations. The car industry was doing fine, no huge worries about gas availability or prices, and upgrading models every few years was the abundant society way. So, GM executives must have considered the Saturn approach an interesting little aside and nothing more. Too bad.

If just one auto manufacturer were to perhaps have explored a very similar path more recently, and taken the risk to commit fully to such a “crazy” way of doing business, the industry would be on its solid way to a new game rather than back-peddling.

Initially, the Saturn brand could have been mapped as doing most everything right to transparently serve the more connective/storytelling/community-oriented side of their customers’ buying processes. It was a “woman’s way” business model that served everyone better, but it arrived just a decade or so before auto executives could come close to harnessing its power.

Don’t let this happen to you.

In an economic downturn, there may be a tendency to give up on new ideas and thinking, and just hunker down, until the worst is over. But, what if this is really our chance to examine new possibilities? If freaking out doesn’t make your numbers improve (and - at this point - you can lead a consumer to your product, but you can’t make her buy), what might happen when you use that brainwave space to identify and integrate consumer trends you never actually noticed before? Perhaps amazing things.

Take Reena Jana’s quick hit Businessweek article and video with David Rockwell, architect/branding expert/set designer, as an example. He commented on hotel design, which has been on my mind a bit lately too. One of Rockwell’s thoughts: what about holding cooking classes in hotel kitchens? Such design thinking is worth a little hotelier attention these days, given the convergence of trends in staying home, cooking more, and being with family. What else, physical space or otherwise, is primed for such “transformability,” as Rockwell called it?

Cooking classes in a hotel kitchen could serve consumers and add value on so many levels - but without this “what now” sense of doom we feel, such ideas might never surface. Given extreme limitations, creative thinking is forced to be that much more bold, even as the solutions become more streamlined.

Here’s another example of transformability, in my mind: Consider how Subaru is handling the current “discount” season, with their “Share The Love” philanthropic campaign. Rather than promoting money-back at loan signing or one of the other typical year-end strategies for a car dealer, they kept within the tight parameters, learned more about their consumers and thought quite differently. What their research found was that a charitable donation would very much resonate with the types of people who’d be considering a Subaru buy right about now.

Inspiring customers into a car purchase during a downturn, and doing good at the same time? Wow. A tried and true, established auto industry tradition turned on its ear - transformed! Without an extreme impetus to fill a void of ideas in a difficult consumer environment, such a concept might never have surfaced.

One last thing - my gender agenda for this post: First, consider what your brand has done with women in mind lately (and possibly named or pitched as “for women”). Then, step into that economic downturn void for a broader vision. Are there elements, products, spaces therein that actually would have an appreciative male market as well?

All this talk of hotels trying to reach a changed consumer makes me think that the women-driven comfort/living room feel of lobbies and guest rooms may also serve men who’d rather be home with their kids, too. Or, what about transforming perhaps little noticed sustainable building practices into a new economic downturn “values proposition?” I doubt that women are the only ones who’d appreciate the long-term implications of such corporate responsibility.

If design thinking and transformability emerges only when long-established industries with embedded business practices and traditions get hit this hard - maybe we have something to be thankful for after all? This overwhelming bad may have opened a few more of us up to a very clever, possibly unusual - and thereby all the more noticeable - leveraging of consumer trends.