Un-Fiction By Cathy MacDonald
Not released for publication
WHAT A GIRL WANTS, WHAT A GIRL NEEDS
EVEolution, The Eight Truths of Marketing to Women
By Faith Popcorn with Lys Marigold
Hardcover, 272 pps.
Price: $36.95
Hyperion, distributed in Canada by H.B. Fenn & Company Ltd.
If Faith Popcorn did nothing more than coin the term "cocooning" for the 1990s trend, she'd still be worthy of a $500 question on Jeopardy. But instead, just like the Energizer Bunny, this trendspotting marketing maven keeps going and going and going.
With EVEolution, The Eight Truths of Marketing to Women, Popcorn sets her bionic bunny eye on women and their growing buying power. Every 60 seconds, at twice the rate of men, a woman starts a new business. In the U.S. there are 9.1 million female-owned businesses, toting up $3.6 trillion in annual sales.
Women, Popcorn says, make almost every purchasing decision, even influencing 80 per cent of all car purchases. So why do most sales guys still stereotypically point them to the makeup mirror rather than the mileage stats?
It's that type of prehistoric marketing mistake that Popcorn promises to fix, suggesting smart companies willing to woo and win female loyalty in the next decade will "dominate every significant product and service category".
So what's a girl want? It ain't that simple because, as Popcorn says, women never come right out and say. She uses anecdotal accounts and statistical evidence to show woman are busy jugglers of work, family and community commitments. Ergo, they want to feel part of a group while buying well-made products quickly and dependably. They also want service and personal touches, and they're willing and able to pay for them.
Once you get past Popcorn's determined yet annoying use of cutesy terms like "e-llinieum" and "EVEsdropping", it becomes crystal clear she is very, very good at marketing. And it seems even the big guys need advice.
She figures H.J. Heinz ignored the female focus when it bought Weight Watcher's International. It hyped packaged food sales rather than the program's real appeal: the group bonding between women trying to lose weight. Food sales wasted away and Heinz sold off the group meeting part of the biz faster than the Duchess of York lost her first 10 pounds.
And why, Popcorn muses, doesn't Johnson & Johnson make the marketing move to sponsoring clean ladies' restrooms at fast food restaurants? Women would love them for it and the company would have a grateful public sampling J&J products.
Popcorn is at her best, and her best self-promotion, by applying her eight truths to the struggle of once mighty cosmetic giant Revlon. The customer isn't the focus anymore, women don't like company owner Ron Perleman's messily public personal life, and they can't connect with the too-perfect, young models Revlon uses despite Perleman's real-life dalliance with the beautiful -- but not 25-year-old -- actress Ellen Barkin.
Popcorn unveils her (groan) Revlon-olution strategy, including a Revlon hook-up with top-name employers of females like Ford to provide a Revlon Health Link on that company's Web site. Ford gets potentially healthier employees, Revlon gets name recognition from loyal and grateful women.
Frankly, any cosmetic company would kill for a mascara formula that will open eyes as wide as some of Popcorn's newest musings will. As with her previous bestsellers The Popcorn Report and Clicking, Popcorn is savvy, provocative, and still a must-read for anyone wanting to do business.
3030
Copyright © 2000 Cathy MacDonald
Distributed by Writers Syndication Services
