Gender Bending - New Marketing Rage?

ADMIN

• March 03 2009
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Companies are looking just about everywhere these days to tap in to new customers’ wallets and/or purses and it seems one hot new way of doing this is through “gender-bending marketing.”

According to an article in Advertising Age:

“The idea is to look at a category and examine what its [gender] orientation is,” based on its inherent appeal and the marketing that’s traditionally been put behind it, said Matthew Paprocki, president of Los Angeles-based creative boutique Boombang. “All their existing know-how is focused with a different orientation. If you flip that, you appeal to the opposite sex and increase the potential market for your products.”

Some ad types say this concept, referred to as gender-bending for brands, is one all marketers should seriously ponder right now. As economic woes dampen consumer spending, marketers from fashion to package goods will need to be innovative and grow market share by reaching out to untapped consumer bases.

The onetime male-only skate and snowboard retailer Quicksilver called in Boombang a few years ago to help boost its appeal to women. Having grown from just surf-inspired sportswear into fragrance, beauty and even bedroom furnishings for young women, Quicksilver’s Roxy sub-brand accounted for almost 35% of Quicksilver’s revenue in fiscal 2008. Late last year, lingerie retailer Wish Room capitalized on an insight that men may secretly want bras of their own. It may sound like a joke or an episode of “Seinfeld,” but Wish Room saw hundreds of “mansierres” fly out the door at $30 a pop in Japan.

Then again, they misspelled Quiksilver, which may or may not say something about the credibility of this piece.