How to impress a woman:
· Compliment her,
· Respect her
· Honour her,
· Cuddle her,
· Kiss her,
· Love her,
· Tease her,
· Comfort her,
· Protect her,
· Spend money on her,
· Wine and dine her,
· Buy things for her,
· Stand by her,
· Support her,
· Hold her,
· Go to the ends of the earth for her!
The list goes on but the above are true. As simple as these things may sound, women are impressed and moved by very different things than men would be impressed by.
How to impress a man:
· Show up naked,
· Bring food.
Yes, it is that simple! We discussed this with the male members of our class and it turns out it doesn’t take very much to impress a man. These lists suggest that women are more ‘in-depth’ than men and as a result, we prefer more detail. This is due to the fact that the male and female brains work very differently and in terms of marketing campaigns, it is vital to understand the difference in the brain process when producing an appropriately targeted advertisement.
When taking a test to discover my brain’s “Sex I.D”, I found out that I have both male and female traits and thus, my brain works in neither a female of male orientated way. When carrying out the first part of the test (which focused on angles) my results stated that I found the test neither hard nor easy. My score was 15 out of 20 with the average score for women being 13.3 out of 20, and the average score for being 15.1 out of 20. This therefore suggests my brain has both male and female traits when it comes to spatial ability. Research into the male and female brain states that males mainly use the left side of their brain; however, women generally use both sides of their brain. Part of the test also involves clasping your hands together and if your left thumb is on top of your right thumb, as mine was, then the right half of your brain is more likely to be dominant. Some studies theorise that as a right brain dominant person, you may excel in visual, spatial and intuitive processes. Part three of the test focused on emotions and systems and my empathy score was 13 out of 20 where as the female average was 10.6 out of 20 and the male average was 7.9 out of 20. It has been suggested that empathisers are better at accurately judging other people’s emotions and responding appropriately. This is important when considering the advertisements as many of these are aimed at our emotions. The “Sex I.D.” test can be found at (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/. Why not take the test and see how your results compare with mine?
We also carried out another task in class which involved looking at the picture to the rig
ht and studying it for 60 seconds. We covered the picture and wrote down what we remembered. Why not try it yourself before reading the results? It turns out that men remembered the big picture on an office like the location of the desk or bookshelf. Women, however, remembered more intimate details like a vase of flowers in the corner, or a picture of a husband and wife on a book case. You may be wondering why this relevant but when we relate it to advertisements and direct mail, it may suggest that women prefer to be presented with intimate detail and fine distinctions, such as, 5 different variations of shampoo for curly hair, straight hair, oily hair, dry hair etc. Which one do we choose? Any wonder it takes us so long when we’re shopping! For men, toiletry advertisements usually focus on a single product. This is because men are likely to pick up on one or two very salient and obvious kinds of cues, for example if a product is free and they also think in a more macro way and need to be shown the big picture. As well as this, men are less likely to process complex metaphors. (I wonder why that is!) Because there are such vast differences in how male and females perceive things, it is vital for advertising campaigns to choose their target audience (specifically gender) and tailor their advertisements to suit the potential customers.We then progressed to the targeting of specific genders with charity advertising. Sylke V. Schnepf from Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute has outlined that that women are more likely to donate to charitable causes but men are more generous in terms of the amount given. Quantile regression analysis shows that this pattern is robust if we take into account gender differences in individual characteristics such as household structure, education and income. In class, we watched a number of advertisements and wrote down how they made us feel. Advertisements which had a male voice over with a Scottish accent and soft music seemed to make me feel most emotional and this could be due to the fact that we associate different accents with different things. Direct mail is also an important part of charity advertising and just like a television ad, the charity needs to decide its target audience. In direct mail, women tend to respons to an ‘emotional’ style therefore charities have tended to use a ‘female/emotional’ style of writing in their fund-raising mail-shots. If direct mail is aimed at the male population then it tends to be a ‘factual’ style of writing. A re-written “factual” letter for men generated a response 85 percent better than the original ‘female/emotional’ pack. When the ‘male/factual’ version was sent to women, the response rate was 15 percent lower than the original. Women also like a ‘collaborative’ and conversational stule along with strong colours and evocative images. Men on the other hand found ‘chatty’ style annoying and preferred hard data and concise language, which they could scan before making a quick and informed decision. Men generally felt neutral about colours, and images seemed irrelevant.
The advert I have inserted below, from the NSPCC has been reported to have gained most of its donations from a female audience. This relates back to the theory that women respond to empathy.
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