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Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better…Including Marketing
By Cynthia Fedor | December 15, 2008
In a recent article titled, “Why Women Are the Superior Marketing Sex,” Mark Ritson explains why women, in his opinion, tend to be better marketers. He uses his own observations and actual physical attributes of the female vs. male brain as proof. Based on his ‘studies,’ he concludes the following:
- Women’s brains are built for empathy
- Women’s brains produce better market research
- Women’s brains work better for brands
- Women’s brains are better at brand positioning
- Women’s brains are more attuned to the competition
- Women don’t talk as much about themselves
- Women’s brains age better
Now, I can’t agree more that all of the above points are true. However, I am also slightly offended that his explanation for women’s success in the marketing world is strictly due to issues of anatomy rather than hard work.
Clare Salmon, director of strategy and customer marketing, RSA, sums my objections up perfectly:
“…In the context of traditional prejudice, we just had to be better than our male peers if we were to get to the top of the food chain… Please don’t patronize me by telling me I had a ‘head start’ in getting there because my brain is a different shape.”
“These kinds of crass functional and gender prejudices do not help us to decide how to engender the right leadership qualities for modern marketers.”
You said it sister! This type of argument—boy vs. girl—is popping up a lot more with regards to the world’s financial woes. Some are asking, “If women were in charge, would we be in this mess?” Some major institutions think not. Those, featured in a Management Today article titled, “Let Women Tame the Macho Excess,” feel that male leaders were more likely to make riskier moves that essentially failed to pay off in the end. In fact, research by the University of Cambridge kind of supports this claim.
However, one can make the argument that it’s not leadership of a particular gender that causes trouble for some businesses; rather, it’s stupidity and greed that gets businesses into trouble. And those two traits aren’t necessarily gender specific.
What are your thoughts on this matter? I’m curious to know.