Highlights From My Conversation with Michele Miller, author of The Soccer Mom Myth

Michele Miller, author of Wonderbranding blog, dropped by my radio show this week. Michelle is the author of The Soccer Mom Myth (Wizard Academy Press), a Top 20 marketing books list seller on Amazon.com, and The Natural Advantages of Women, the audio book that has been hailed for its concepts, principles, and new scientific information that explains how the female brain is “hardwired” for personal greatness.”

She’s won awards from Marketing Sherpa and Forbes.com, and was featured in Seth Godin’s ebook, “Bull Marketing.” Michele is the marketing columnist for Inc.com, the web companion to Inc. business magazine.

Welcome to the show!

You co-authored a book titled The Soccer Mom Myth: Today’s Female Customer, Who She Is,Why She Really Buys. That was in 2007, before the elections and all the campaign drivel about the term Soccer Mom and exploiting.

My friend, Erika Andersen, coined the phrase reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future in her book Being Strategic. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future back then, ahead of your time, I think, when you wrote this book?

I am a big believer in baby steps. I was giving a presentation in Sweden last week and I said when I was younger my aspirations were very big; I was going to change the world.

As I get older that aspiration gets more realistic. I realize it takes many small steps to change the world.

I am most proud of with The Soccer Mom Myth is that we were going to break the idea of marketing to women into small doable segments. First you need to understand your market then here are the small things about marketing to women. When something is started with all good intentions there is no follow through because people are so overwhelmed with how big the topic is that they can’t get done what they need to.

I am working on second smaller book, breaking it down even further into some basic things about how to understand the female consumer better. I have also blogged about it and these have been my most popular posts. That was really the aspiration for the book. Our greatest joy comes from the feedback we receive via email.

Do you find that smaller businesses are able to embrace your perspective, your research or ideas in that book, easier or faster than larger companies who have more resources?

I think there is a tradeoff.

When you are a small business, you may not have the financial resources or the manpower to do things, so it is important to do one little bit at a time.

The tradeoff when you have a big corporation is that you are very top heavy and it is hard to achieve anything, almost impossible to achieve anything in its original form. There are many, many cooks in the kitchen. I think that is why I so enjoy working with small businesses.

My greatest joy is going out and working with them in these 2-day seminars and showing theme these little things they can try.

If I had my druthers I’d go small business just because things get done.

Where are you at now in terms of reaching this hoped-for future? Have you reached it? Did your reasonable aspiration change along the way?

I think the success stories we see on a regular basis. When I see people have actually learned something from the book. People make the mistake of thinking all these businesses are owned by women. Not all of these businesses are owned by women and I am delighted that half of the people who attend my classes are men.

We have also had to print more books as well as a soft cover, and have gone international as well, so I know we have been successful. I just got back from Sweden and will return and do a workshop later this year.

What were you doing in Sweden? Tell us about that story, how they found you, how you came to speak at their event.

This just goes to show you I am also a very big champion of social media – tools like Twitter and Facebook. I always advise my clients to start a fan page.

But, I made a conscious decision when I started with Facebook I would just have a personal page...you’re looking at going on in my life because I feel if anyone wants to work with me or hire me, if we don’t have the same perspective or if they don’t’ like me, then it won’t work.

I had received an invitation six months ago from a woman in Sweden and what I didn’t know was that she was responsible for organizing the Prime Minister’s Conference on Economic Growth. They invited me to speak there.

They have a mandate that ½ of all business should be run by women by 2016. They are adamant about gender equality. They want women to understand their leadership strengths. From 2016 there will be 250K businesses in need of new CEOs. They have an aging population. Sweden has a strong campaign going to help women get there.

It is incredible. I was a keynote at this conference.

You mentioned that 50% of your workshop attendees were now men. When did that shift begin?

There really wasn’t a shift. Right from the beginning, in 2003 when I came out a small audio book called The Natural Advantages of Women, and my senior partner, Roy H. Williams who’s a triple best-selling author himself, said to me, that half of your readers will be men.

He was so right.

From the day I started teaching my courses it is always half men, half women, right down the line.

I never tried to make gender as much of an issue as people wanted me to. It is about science, brain wiring and environment and how we are as a culture. The lines are more blurred. It’s not such a big deal to younger people.

Back in the day you wrote, that no more than 30% of advertisers reach female customer. That’s the customer that makes 80% of all purchasing decisions. Right?

If nothing else there’s the reason to focus on women.

There is a fear that if you focus on the female customer, you will be driving away your male customer.

You’ll be driving away 20% of your audience to reach 80%...

¾ of the way through the book we realized that not only are women different from men, but they are different from each other as well. Not all women think the same.

In Chapter 16 we said, “there is no such thing as marketing to women” and what we are really talking about is marketing to the right side of the brain. This is the home of imagination and persuasion and emotional intelligence, sense and pattern, how does this business fit into the pattern of my life, what kind of customer experience is it giving me?

What we say is that Men have right brains too, but we focus on women here because they have four times as many connections into that right side of the brain which means not only do they have purchasing power but they are also plugging into that side of the brain where you point your brand four times faster and four times deeper.

That doesn’t exclude men – they just don’t get there as quickly or deeply. I think that is a fear that companies have and that is why I focus on science and research.

Men and women are different. No surprise to married couples. So, if so many ads fail to reach women can we say too many ad execs remain unmarried?

Once we had our economic meltdown, all of a sudden companies are saying that they have been spending a lot of money and not getting good results. The creative is not persuasive. There are billions of dollars spent on advertising that doesn’t produce results. Now ad agencies are in trouble and are shutting their doors because they don’t know how to deal with the new reality.

26:33

All women to women marketing agencies are run by women- I think you need some male influence in these companies. Women don’t just want female communication language; they want and need a balance.

We can’t bring arranged marriages to the ad industry. That’s funny to even think about. Maybe a reality show...So let’s say you’re talking to the female CEO of a huge ad agency. They’ve given you 10 minutes to tell them the right way to advertise. What would you say?

I think it comes down to some basic ideas.

1.Be real. I think culturally that whatever you do, you need to be authentic. That is a word that is almost overused today, but it is true. Show us who you are. I think the best example of authenticity is the Domino’s Pizza campaign. They did many surveys with their customers and they discovered that people don’t like the taste of their pizza. They listened and wanted to change –they acknowledged that they needed to change. Being real is where it is at.

2. Speak their language; be multi-lingual. Another thing would be to know that you have different messages for different people. One ad is not going to say it all. Not all women speak the same language.

3. Monologue does not work anymore. It is all about conversation now. Customer empowerment has never been stronger because of the Internet.

Same scenario, but the CEO of this ad agency is a guy. What would change in what you say?

1.Speak their language. I would use more male based communication styles: more bullet points, sentences based more on logic and shorter sentences.

2. I'd talk about authenticity.

3. I would need more data and numbers. I would have to make them understand scientifically WHY we need to create the messages that we do about brain wiring.

40:55

You mentioned four different languages.

It falls along the Myers-Briggs. It has to do where a woman gets her energy and what her time horizon is:

1. Competitive

2. Spontaneous

3. Methodical

4. Humanistic

All four require subtle changes in language by using keywords and phrases in a dialect that they understand. It is important to make agencies and businesses aware that one size does not fit all.

You write about two types of advertising: relational and transactional.

This is probably a stupid question, but that’s one skill I have. The question is does either gender prefer one or the other type of advertising?

That’s not a stupid question; it is a good question. I have not found any evidence that one gender prefers one or the other.

In the long term, relational has a stronger affect because you are building a relationship with a customer and this is powerful especially due to social media where you can have a conversation with a brand. Women would probably go more for relational advertising upfront, but there is a time and a place for transactional advertising. Transactional is talking about a specific item that is on sale. It is something to drive people quickly, but you don’t keep people long term but you didn’t provide anything long term. You based your business on price.

The economy also drives advertising - the transactional ad has a little more power right now because of people’s perception about value. Value is more price driven than it was in past several year.

Let's talk about boobs and butts. They still matter in advertising, right? What are three reasons why boobs and butts still matter in advertising?

There has been a new wave in pushing the envelope with racy ads in the past few years. I find some of the ads amusing and creative. There is always an audience who will be upset.

These big companies have deep pockets and they can afford to try these campaigns. If it doesn’t go well, it won’t hurt that much. A smaller company could not do that.

Because of those deep pockets, creativity trumps persuasion. Everyone wants to get people talking. But did it persuade people to buy your product? Most of the time, it did not. I just don’t think creativity is going to go away...people just want an affect.

I think it still shows that men remain the target of the ad and this is why the ads don’t stick. There is no method of persuasion. I think if these ads were part of an overall comprehensive campaign to reach out to women there would have been fewer backlashes.

What’s the number one thing most people miss in their Word-of-Mouth marketing?

That they can’t buy it. It comes from the customer experience and it is not just about the great experience they have with you, but how you “fix” the negative experience. If you don’t fix it bad WOM spreads even faster than positive conversation. You can build your business on WOM without advertising.

Let’s talk reading. Leaders are readers.* You’re a leader. What are you reading?

• Daniel Pink’s new book: Drive.

• The other is written by my partner Tom Wanek. Tom writes the blog, Beyond Advertising. His newest book is: Currencies that Buy Credibility.

• Being a big fiction reader, Allison Rowe's newest book: Too Much Happiness

Where are you speaking next?

I'm speaking at BlogPaws 2010, April 9-10 in Columbus, OH.

And then at a workshop in Guatemala, end of April.

Where can we follow you?

• Blog: Wonderbranding

• Twitter: Michele Miller

Thanks, Michele!

* Jim Rohn