Marti Barletta

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• Five Best Campaigns For Women: Was 2008 The Breakout Year?  in Marketing Daily on 12/31/2008
  

  Whether you leaned toward presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton or vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, 2008 has been full of breakthroughs for women. From politics to the box-office success of "Sex and the City," this year showed the strength -- in presence and purse -- of women.

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• Your Brand Is Missing The Largest Share Of Wallet And Their Vote by Nancy Shonka Padberg (Engage:Boomers on 07/16/2012)
  

  Nancy - Thanks for the acknowledgment - and for all your excellent writing on Boomers. Loved this article's factoids on luxury travel purchase and passports! Just amazing how marketers remain so oblivious. Almost makes you wonder if it's some sort of "willful blindness," to borrow Margaret Heffernan's book title. It's not the facts aren't clear here, right? I can't wait until some major player wakes up and "discovers" Boomers. Wait, I think Nielsen "found" 78M Americans 50+ just last year! It was sort of hilarious actually, how they started crowing about their remarkable revelation, when so many of us have been banging on the media door for years!

• The Right Word To Describe Work For Boomers? Try 'Work' by Stephen Reily (Engage:Boomers on 04/09/2012)
  

  Whoops - While I was typing, Paula Lynn added ANOTHER excellent post! I think as marketers, sometimes we tend to over-report on "people like us," forgetting that we are just a tiny subset of Americans, and more fortunate than most.

• The Right Word To Describe Work For Boomers? Try 'Work' by Stephen Reily (Engage:Boomers on 04/09/2012)
  

  Excellent post from Stephen Reily on Boomer Women's attitude toward their work... AND excellent Comments by Brent Green and Matt Thornhill. Interestingly, although the three appear to disagree, I think to one extent or another, they're ALL right. (Maybe it's just part of me that tends to assess so-called "facts" in context rather than as black & white truths (a trait that skews a little more female than male). ... And the part of me that has enough experience with research to know that, while anecdotal evidence doesn't "count" in the same way as quantitative data for representing trends in a total population, nonetheless, it can often convey more "truth" by breaking away from quantitative averages, which tend to distort and obscure more than illuminate.

• Marketers Missing Many Boats On Older Urbanites by Sarah Mahoney (Marketing Daily on 06/23/2011)
  

  Thank heavens the big dogs like BCG and even Nielsen have finally "discovered" both women and Boomers! Marketers have been leaving a tragic amount of cash on the table by: ----Defining target audiences on gut vs on data: "because men talk more about traditionally male categories, they must buy more" (men matter a lot in some categories, but are still buy less than half of new cars, computers or consumer electronics)----Allowing articles focused on small factors to shift their focus away from big opportunities: "Today's man is more likely than his father to ... grocery shop" (true, but women are still (conservatively) 65% of grocery shoppers, and spend on average 28% more per trip); ...use grooming products" (true but the men's market accounts for $250MM globally, vs the women's $2.5B) ...or be a stay-at-home dad" (true, but there are 140K sahd's in the US, vs 5.3MM stay-at-home moms).--- Obstinately hanging on to outdated beliefs like: "The only good consumer is a young consumer" (allegedly because when you get them to buy your product once, they are yours for life - How dumb is that assumption!?) In fact, mature consumers (or PrimeTime Women, as I call them, since in this lifestage, as in every other, women are the primary buyers of almost everything) are the largest AND the fastest growing AND the highest spending segment in the market. (Granted, older HH are smaller HH, but there are an awful lot of them and HH headed by 55-64 spend 2.5x as much per capita as HH 35-49). Moreover, contrary to popular opinion, PrimeTime Women are LESS likely than younger buyers to be brand loyal... explained by the easy "insight" that post-family, women finally get to choose based on their own passions, priorities and preferences, instead of deferring to what's best for the family as a whole. (Seriously, anyone who thinks mom is going to get another mini-van once her kids have their own wheels is delusional!) So thank you Michael Silverstein, and your co-author, Kate Sayres, for your terrific book, What Women Want; and thank you, Nielsen, for finally starting to track and report spending, brand and media behavior for people over the age of 54. Since that's where all the money is, marketers have some catching up to do in re-tooling their thinking, strategies and creative approaches to appeal to the people who purchase the most today, and for the foreseeable future - say, the next two decades. Marti Barletta, author PrimeTime Women: How to Win the Hearts, Minds and Business of Boomer Big Spenders

• JCPenney's Oscar Ads Bomb, Per Ace Metrix by Tanya Gazdik (Marketing Daily on 03/01/2011)
  

  A major reason JCP got it wrong is they targeted the wrong audience. Everyone thinks the women's apparel market is driven by young Gen Yers, like those depicted in the ads. In fact, for the past 5 years at least, the only part of the market that has shown any strength is driven by PrimeTime Women, as I call them - women in their 50s and 60s. Research consistently shows that PrimeTime Women feel invisible to marketers... and that is certainly the case with the JCP campaign. I'm not saying the company should target PrimeTime Women exclusively - that would surely alienate the young ladies! - simply that they might want to think about including in their 7-spot Oscar advertising pool *some* relevance to the people who are actually spending the money on women's clothes. Novel idea, I know; and one that doesn't seem to have any traction anywhere in the fashion industry. The numbers are incontrovertible, so this "willful blindness" suggests this is a group of marketers more concerned with what their peers think of how cool they are than what their customers might actually want to buy and wear. Seriously - with times as tough as these, how are you going to explain that to your shareholders? Marti BarlettaAuthor, Marketing to Women and PrimeTime Womenwww.trendsight.com

• Q&A II: GM's Ewanick, Perry On A Bigger Pond by Karl Greenberg (Marketing Daily on 02/10/2011)
  

  Sounds like GM finally has some real marketing talent on board! And, "new economy" notwithstanding, GM is still big enough that good news for GM is good news for US jobs and world prosperity.

• It's Walmart's Ball, And It's Changing The Game by Thom Forbes (Marketing Daily - Top of the News on 01/21/2011)
  

  Once again Thom Forbes has the smarts and integrity to tell it like it is. It's become all too common for journalists and commentators of all kinds to focus only on the negative. Knowing it's the provocative headline that will attract readers, the nasty slant that will get them riled up enough to comment, it's all too tempting to succumb to the temptation to seek attention for its own sake. But all this negative attention is at the expense of sharing the good news with people when it's available. Given the strong role of expectations in driving economic activity, a little optimism would go a long way in reassuring people that it's safe to come out of the bunkers in which we've been hunkered down for the last three years. And frankly, not only does a company like WalMart deserve some props for making efforts to make things better; but people are more likely to make better choices with their own dollars - both consuming and investing - when they have a balanced perspective. Is WalMart perfect? No. Are they making progress. No doubt about it. I thank them for that, and I thank Thom Forbes for calling it out.

• Q&A On Shopper Marketing: Focus On Women by Sarah Mahoney (Marketing Daily on 01/19/2011)
  

  Kudos! Sharon Love debunks one of the big myths in marketing ("dads are as important as moms in consumer targeting"); explains an important new insight (the difference between "value" and "worth" in describing women's buying mindset); and flags what to expect in the marketplace in the next 3 years (permanent shift from big brands to private label; evolution toward ecommerce via both digital and mobile technologies; and channel blurring). A tremendous amount of content in a short interview!

• Be Careful To What You Aspire by Thom Forbes (Marketing Daily - Top of the News on 01/11/2011)
  

  Thom - Both you and Pamela Danziger are among my favorite "go to" people for real insight on what's happening with the market and marketing today. So it was a real treat to get your opinions combined in this article! Like you, I've been puzzled by the repeated reports showing that while the mass market is going to hell in a handbasket, the "luxury goods" market is going gangbusters. I've chalked it up to an acceleration in the decade long trend of the rich getting richer while the middle class loses purchasing power. So I'm very glad you pointed out some mitigating factors that provide some very real context and explanation. I must agree with Danziger's assessment that most marketers of luxury goods live in a fantasy world about their customers. My observation is their products and their marketing communications seem to be targeted much more towards impressing their peers (a.k.a. competitors!) than their customers. The massive amounts of potential cash they are leaving on the table as a consequence seems to be secondary to their focus on party invitations from and prestige among "all the best people." I assume this has been tolerated by these companies' shareholders only because, up until 2008, the mass market was buying anyway, even though nobody was talking to them as consumers. I suspect that now, that's a luxury (!) that shouldn't be taken for granted. I'm eager to read Danziger's new book, and learn her take on what's really going on in the market. Thanks for another great article. Marti BarlettaAuthor, Marketing to Women; and PrimeTime Women

• Can TV Ads Really Sell Anything? Ask Broccoli. by Amy Corr (Creative Media Blog on 12/13/2010)
  

  LOVE this! Contrary to popular - uninformed, apparently - opinion in most of the marketing world, TV is very alive and kickin'. Across the past 5 years, while Web time has increased 121% (a large part of which is work, not personal), Americans' TV usage is stable at around 5 hours a DAY (blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/....../Nielsen-Q2-2010-State-of-the-Media-Fact-Sheet.pdf.) True, A18-34 tend to watch more like 4 hours, while PirimeTimers (45-64) watch about 6 hours. But that's all GOOD, because PrimeTimers not only HAVE more money than singles and early-family couples, but they SPEND a lot more - 2.5X per person. Also, women 25+ watch more TV than men, which is also good, because women are the ones who decide what to devote all that spending to. In fact, 80% of consumer dollars are spent by women, and at least 50% of business dollars as well. Kudos to the Canadians for their clear-headed attempt to cure marketers of their Shiny New Object syndrome. Social media has demonstrated that it can be a useful marketing tool, on the order of event marketing or sampling or word of mouth programs, but it is dangerously delusional to believe the hyped up headlines that "mass media is dead." As professionals, we need to see enough of the big picture to put our money where our market is - and 5 hours a day, that's sitting on the sofa in front of the TV set. Marti Barletta Author, Marketing to Women; and PrimeTime Women. Co-author, with Tom Peters, of Trends.

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