In a recent edition, ‘The Grocer’ Magazine asked:
If they don’t want girly beers, what DO women want?
They asked Aquitude CEO, Christina Ioannidis for her thoughts on the subject. Christina began her sales and marketing career as one of the first female sales-reps for Allied Domecq in Spain and has first hand knowledge of what female drinkers are thinking.
Excerpt
How to sell more beer to women? It’s a question many brewers have wrestled with over the past decade confronted by a steady decline in beer sales and consumption.
The brewing industry has been lobbying hard for a reduction in beer duty, but while pricing is obviously an important issue, brewers face another arguably much bigger challenge: broadening the category’s appeal.
The fact remains that the vast majority of beer is consumed by men, so the female market is largely untapped. Yet Carlsberg brand Eve and Molson Coors’Animée, which were both targeted squarely at women, failed. So how did the brewers get it so spectacularly wrong?
Are girly beers a dud concept full stop or was it the execution rather than the idea at fault? And if this approach isn’t going to work, what will?
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Nevertheless, while it can be counterproductive, “gender-based targeting is worth it if you do it right,” insists Christina Ioannidis, CEO of Aquitude, a marketing agency focused on women as customers. She cites Baileys and niche vodka brand U’Luvka as two brands that have consistently shown they understand women through both presentation and activation.
“As women, we consume products in a different way to men,” she says. “We like incorporating little details and rituals, such as the lime with a bottle of Corona. A lot of brands go wrong because they don’t consult women in the NPD process. Seldom do they go out and properly explore their target market – often only doing that on a sampling basis when the type of product has already been decided.”
See the full article..