As soon as I first saw him, I looked away in disgust. He was hideous, and everything about him - his hair, his mannerisms, the way he dressed - underscored just how repulsive he was. He was also stupid and pathetic. From the little I heard of his conversation, he was describing to a phone company representative some utterly improbable glitch, and asking the rep if that could account for why his phone never rings. He had, he pointed out, given his number to several women, and was waiting to hear from them.
The man was not a real person. He was some phone company's idea of a single man. Why not sell the reliability of your communications technologies by creating a despicable caricature of single people, and then airing that loathsome ad on prime-time television?
In my last post, I raised the topic of how singles are portrayed on TV. Getting to the commercial breaks, though, provides no respite from the singlism. Same for ads in magazines, newspapers, and online. Marketing is saturated with singlism and matrimania. Ironically, this is not just insulting to singles - it is counterproductive to marketers. The singles they are portraying, or to whom they are selling, exist mostly only in their warped little marketing minds.
Here's my list of the top 6 marketing myths and mistakes. Take a look at them and add your own. And, as with the television shows, let's single out the ads that portray singles accurately.
MARKETING MYTH AND MISTAKE #1: What single people want, more than any particular product, is a soul mate. Because (some) marketers believe this, they try to sell their products by selling the fantasy of getting married.
A telling example of this came from a television ad that Coldwell Banker ran over and over again a few summers ago. In it, the narrator, a realtor, said this:
"When Sylvia Maxwell was single again, she came to me at Coldwell Banker to find a new home. I searched high and low and when I found one she loved, she made a proposal to buy it. Larry was a single professor who lived next door, until one day he made a proposal of another kind. Gives a whole new meaning to ‘love thy neighbor.' For almost a century, Coldwell Banker has known that real estate is only part of the story."
Visually, the ad introduces us to Sylvia and Larry. By the end, the two of them are holding hands, skipping, and frolicking through the yards of their homes, she in full bridal attire and he in his groom-ware. The bridesmaids and groomsmen follow gleefully behind them.
But never mind the visuals. What really got to me was that last line, about how Coldwell has always known that real estate is only part of the story. So I, a single woman, might go to a Coldwell Banker realtor in search of a home. The realtor, though, will just know that what I really want is a husband.
I started keeping track of all of the ads that feature weddings or brides. Setting aside the totally understandable products such as jewelry, catering, photography, and tuxedos, I also found wedding themes in ads for:
• Cereal, soft drinks, ice cream, chocolate, and cheese
• Dentistry, headache medication, body lotion, and eye drops
• Cars, clothes, and credit cards
• Beer, cigarettes, and wine coolers
• Hotels and life insurance
• Lottery tickets and motor oil. (Motor oil!)
Advertising is matrimaniacal. And yet, consider these results of a Pew Research Survey. Single people (divorced, widowed, always single) were asked:
• Whether they were already in a committed relationship, and
• Whether they were looking for a partner.
The most common answer, given by 55%, was that they were not in a committed relationship and that they were not looking for one.
Related to the mistake of seeing singles as more concerned about getting married than anything else is the vision of singles as living a narrow, constricted life, as if they were waiting to find "The One" before buying homes or traveling the world or pursuing their passions. That's MARKETING MYTH AND MISTAKE # 2.
An example comes from advice offered by a boomer woman who is most certainly not leading a stunted or timid life. I'm talking about Suze Orman. In The Road to Wealth, she began a sentence like this:
"If you are a single person, a one-bedroom condo may seem ideal now."
I was excited. I thought she was going to continue by saying that I would soon discover how much I would love having more space, so I should just go for it right from the beginning!
But no. Instead, she continued the sentence this way:
"but if you hope to get married and start a family in the next few years, you'll need more space pretty quickly."
Suze Orman was thinking like the realtor who tried to sell me a town house or condo, after I had come to an open house because I wanted a house. Many singles have told me similar stories. When realtors lead their single clients to smaller and cheaper places than the clients were seeking, they are doing something extraordinarily rare in the business world - working against their own self-interest.
MARKETING MISTAKE #3 is to portray singles in demeaning and dismissive ways. Here I think single men have it at least as bad, if not worse, than single women.
Remember the "lost another loan to ditech" campaign? That ad featured a doughy man with ill-fitting suits and pudgy ringless fingers who worked for ditech's competitor. So pathetic was the guy that even his therapist got his loan from ditech. One of the ads ends with the hapless bachelor emitting a plaintive wail, "Mommmm!" He's a mama's boy, but even his mother has gotten her loan from ditech instead of from her own son.
MARKETING MISTAKE # 4 is to act as if single people do not even exist.
• Think of all the ads that list prices "per couple."
• Think of all of the greeting cards that express "our" congratulations or "our" condolences.
• Or consider the Magellan catalog. It tries to tempt me to buy a colorful luggage strap with the promise of solving that pesky problem, "Which bag is ours?"
Again, by assuming that people come packaged in couples, these businesses talk past the very people who may be interested in their products. There are millions of us, and those numbers just keep growing.
MARKETING MISTAKE #5: Peddling insecurities.
A staple of the advertising world is the threat: Unless you buy our product, you will have yellow teeth, gross breath, disgusting smells emanating from under your arms, laughable fashion sense, and a big butt.
Save it. Insecurities are for kids. Many singles are living their lives fully and unapologetically. Unless you want to alienate them, speak to their strengths and their real life needs and interests.
MARKETING MYTH AND MISTAKE #6: Assuming that single people "don't have anyone."
The belief that single people are "alone" and "don't have anyone" has been battered by one sociological and marketing study after another. Many singles live alone but they have important people in their lives. Singles are more likely than married people to help, encourage, and spend time with their neighbors and friends. They are also the ones who more often visit, support, advise, and contact their siblings and parents.
Results of the Boomer Heartbeat study, recently reported by JWT and C & R Research, also demonstrated the important places of friends in the lives of single boomers. Whereas married couples with kids spend only 16% of their time with friends, single boomers without kids spend 28% of their time with friends. This is not because kids take up so much time. Boomers whose kids are no longer at home (the empty nesters) still spend only 15% of their time with friends. Even more strikingly, single boomers with kids at home spend about the same amount of time with their friends as do single boomers without kids (29%). The explanation that spending time with friends "compensates" for not having a spouse also won't fly (even apart from the fact that it is insulting). Married couples without kids also spend 27% of their time with friends.
