The time had come long ago. For brand owners and marketers. To look beyond Mars and Venus. And smell the Planet Reality.
Here’s some numbo jumbo(read shocking reality):-
- Women in India influence 85% of household purchases.
- Women now account for 30% of luxury car sales in metros.
- Female gamers are over 40% of India’s mobile gaming market.
- Women-founded startups in India grew by 77% over the last five years.
- And yes, they’re on Tinder and trading crypto. Deal with it.
And how are they treated in return by the smart marketing mavericks. Take a look below.Brands continue to serve:
- Patronizing pink packaging.
- Slo-mo hair flicks in unrealistic lighting.
- “Empowerment” ads that peak at menstruation or motherhood.
There are many reasons why marketers are still getting it horribly wrong; chief among them being Male-centric marketing departments where Ramesh, Rehman or Roger are the decision-making dudes who put together campaigns that sound like “Let’s add a pink ribbon and call it ‘female-focused’!”. We are in new age times but still grappling with Old-School Gender Tropes where the belief is women are “emotional” shoppers while men are “rational” – this is not just outdated, it’s plain lazy. A certain ailment called Data Blindness– the data is out there. We just choose to mansplain it instead of understanding it.
So, here’s a personal memo:-
Dear marketers: She’s not just a “niche.” She’s not your “segment.” She IS the economy. She’s the category killer, the cart-filler, the loyalty-builder, and the one who’s keeping your brand alive while your bros in branding still think ‘shrink it and pink it’ is a campaign strategy.
I will attempt to decipher it by desi-fying it a bit. The problematic portrayals in Incredible India. Here’s what ads here(most of it at least) still believe:-A woman buys a car only after her husband nods(Meanwhile she’s paying EMI on his bike, her dad’s surgery, and her startup’s seed round). She’s either sanskaari or sexy. Never smart. As if intellect’s a limited-edition Rakhi Sawant NFT. Her role in insurance ads? Crying beside the hospital bed or smiling while baking. Fact: She’s the one researching policies at 1 a.m. on PolicyBazaar while you’re bingeing IPL highlights.
Here’s the reality check served Sahara desert hot. Globally, 80% of purchase decisions on an average are made by women. Cutting across all consumer purchases, home furnishings, vacations, new homes, consumer electronics, cars, healthcare, opening new bank accounts etc etc. It goes on and on and on.
Here’s the Red Alert for Brand Owners and Marketers: Women control $31 trillion in global spending power, yet brands still treat them like delicate flowers who only care about pastel colors and calorie counts.Women are too busy running companies, households, and your bottom line to give a damn about your “shrink it & pink it” nonsense.
Women in India are buying homes, stocks, gold, gadgets, and yes — gaming chairs. Women in Tier 2/3 cities are driving digital commerce like absolute queens. She doesn’t need a man to swipe the card. She is the card. The black one. With lounge access. But what do we keep giving her? Perfume ads shot like bad erotica. Cringe empowerment tropes where “freedom” is…wearing jeans at a wedding.
So, for heaven’s sake marketers, quit the victim saviour narrative– because she’s not waiting to be rescued. She’s wondering why your brand is still stuck in 2003. Talk to her like a decision-maker, not a product accessorizer. Make her laugh, think, feel, not just nod at stereotypes. Sell her value, not validation. Women like navy, black, chrome, blood-red, or no colour at all. So, stop Pinkwashing everything. They’re here for features, not frou-frou.
They’re done being marketed at—they want to be spoken with.
Here’s a sobering fact to wash down with your lime juice(or whiskey): only 3% of India’s creative directors are women. Globally, it’s a pathetic 11%. So we’ve got rooms full of men trying to market to women—like a bunch of cats designing a dog collar. They know it goes around the neck, but they’ve missed pretty much everything else.
Some brands have gotten it right:
Ariel’s “Share The Load” campaign didn’t just sell detergent; it sold a cultural revolution wrapped in a 30-second spot. It asked why laundry was considered “women’s work” in a country where gender roles are often set in stone. The result? Sales shot up 60%, and Indian men briefly considered touching washing machines before going back to asking their wives where their socks were.
Tanishq’s remarriage ad showed a dusky-skinned mother getting remarried—hitting the trifecta of Indian taboos: divorce, remarriage, and not being fair-skinned. Conservative uncles nearly had aneurysms, but progressive women opened their wallets. Tanishq stood their ground while competitors were still debating if married women should be allowed to wear anything other than sindoor and submission.
Nike stopped treating women’s sports as the appetizer before the “real” men’s main course. Instead of focusing on looking cute while pretending to exercise (standard approach), they celebrated female athletes who could probably bench press the entire marketing team that created “Pens for Her.” Their women’s business consequently exploded from $7 billion to $9.7 billion faster than you can say “patriarchy.”
Marketing to women isn’t about slapping a feminine hygiene product aesthetic on everything. It’s about recognizing that women are complete human beings whose interests range from quantum physics to reality TV, sometimes within the same hour. Brands that get this aren’t just being woke—they’re being wealthy. Because there’s nothing more profitable than actually understanding the people who control most of the world’s purchasing decisions.
It’s time to stop leaving trillions on the table because you can’t be bothered to see beyond stereotypes. The brands that master this aren’t just going to win the future—they’re going to own it. The rest can enjoy their place in the marketing hall of shame, right next to “Pens for Her” and every fairness cream ad ever made.
“Women hold up half the sky,“ goes the old Chinese proverb. In reality, they’re juggling the sky, the earth, and everything in between while marketers are still debating if they should make the packaging pink or purple. Talk about missing the plot. So, wake up. To Planet Reality!