• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, March 22, 2024

Visa ads focus on women entrepreneurs

Some brands are just better at relating to women, whether they encourage women to take care of themselves or promise to help solve messy problems. New research from Collage Group analyzed 743 leading brands through three different lenses and found that Band-Aid, Visa, and Lysol scored highest.

Ziploc and M&M’s came next, with Google, Hershey, Dawn, Clorox and Dove rounding out the top 10.

Collage evaluated each brand, combining scores for cultural fluency, ability to leverage halo effects, and action on cultural insights.

It’s hardly surprising that so many brands are domestic warhorses. “We expected the heavyweights in the home care space to perform well, given women's disproportionate burden of household responsibilities,” says Katya Skogen, director of cultural insights at Collage Group. “Brands like Lysol, Dawn, and Clorox are ingrained staples in many cleaning routines. Similarly, brands associated with caregiving, particularly for children, such as Band-Aid, Kleenex, or Crayola, mirror women's drive to fulfill others' needs—a product of decades of social conditioning.”

Skogen says researchers were surprised by the strength of Visa, which ranked second. It is the only financial brand to make the top 100, “underscoring Visa's ongoing efforts to challenge gendered stereotypes and highlight women's active involvement in financial affairs,” she says in an email to Marketing Daily.

That includes initiatives like Visa’s “Money is Changing” campaign, which aims to coach millennial women about finances and focuses on women entrepreneurs.

Google, ranking at No. 6, and YouTube at No. 14, also surprised the team, which she admits is probably more of a reflection of internalized biases about women and technology than any marketing reality.

“There are practical reasons why Google and YouTube perform equally well with women as with men,” she says. “These powerhouse brands have significantly improved and expanded our access to essential tools and information.”

And, of course, many brands that do well with women do so because they’ve always been aimed at women, including Dove, Always, Bath & Body Works and Neutrogena.

However, brands like Dollar Tree and Target, for example, are designed for everyone. And while their ability to attract women might have something to do with women’s traditional role as chief shopper, they’re doing something that Walmart and other retailers aren’t.

“Both Dollar Tree and Target empathize with the challenges of being a woman in today's world,” she adds. “These two retailers excel by offering exceptional value while nurturing space for indulgence, creativity, and enjoyment. Being budget-conscious doesn't have to equate to dullness and lack of excitement.”