Like a lot of people around the world, earlier this summer my friends and I were obsessed with the Women's World Cup held in France.
Here we are,watching these incredible athletes,the goals were amazing, the games were clean and engaging,and at the same time,outside the field,these women are talking about equal pay, and in the case of some countries,any pay at all for their sport.
So because we were mildly obsessed,we wanted to watch the games live, and we decided that one of the Spanish-speaking networks in the US was the best place for us to start.
And it wasn't until a few games into the tournament that a friend of mine talks to me and says, "Why does it feel like everything I'm seeing is commercials for makeup and household cleaning products and diets?"It did feel a little bit too obvious, and I don't know if we were sensitive about it or the fact that we were watching with men and boys in our lives, but it did feel a little bit too obvious that we're being targeted for being women.
And to be honest there's nothing necessarily wrong with that.
Someone sat down and looked at the tournament and said,"Well, this thing is likely to be seen by more women,these women are Hispanic because they're watching in Spanish,and this is women content.
Therefore, this is a great place for me to place all these commercials that are female-centric and maybe not other things."If I think about it as a marketer, I know that I absolutely should not be annoyed about it,because this is what marketers are tasked with doing.
Marketers are tasked with building brands with very limited budget, so there's a little bit of an incentive to categorize people in buckets so they can reach their target faster.
So if you think about this,it's kind of like a shortcut.
They're using gender as a shortcut to get to their target consumer.
