What Women Want?

At the time of the 300 screening, it was clear to me that the marketers were concerned that it was a "boy's movie" and were conscious of finding angles with which to market to women - the consensus was that emphasising the role of Queen Gorgo, the power behind the throne, was the obvious hook and one trailer was made with that specifically in mind.

In reality, a number of women from around the world have surprised me by reporting that they enjoyed the movie from a pure beefcake perspective. Arguably, it's not politically correct to think that women would view the movie this way, but then perhaps it's equally patronising to assume that women have to see a powerful role model in order to want to buy a ticket.

My reaction (and the original intetion in writing this post) was to re-emphasise the need for marketers to focus on the real worldview of their audience rather than market in a way that they think they should be. That's still true, but in Googling to remind myself of the queen's name, I discovered that some women bloggers were looking for just such a role model and had clearly not seen the marketing in that way.

Worldviews are many and varied. In pure segmentation terms, you have to decide that with which you're going to align your company, but the cultural resonances and reinforcements that this might involve cannot be overlooked. Those last longer than your campaign and may ultimately come back to haunt you.