“The consumer isn’t a moron,” David Ogilvie once said, famously. “She is your wife!” So with this issue of The Media being dedicated to the fairer sex (note I say fairer, not weaker), I think it is only fitting that I look at this market a little more closely, and try to identify just a few of the hot-buttons when it comes to their media usage habits, and what dynamics are at play.
But paramount is that we establish upfront the reality of the female market; what “cred” do women really have? Perhaps the first thing we should do is explode the myth of “the weaker sex”. As pointed out in last year’s women’s issue, according to Faith Popcorn in the USA:
- women own 53% of all stocks;
- do US$2.3-trillion in sales (I have trouble working with billions, I wonder how many people have any inkling of how many zeros make a trillion dollars?);
- own one third of all US firms, and open a new business every 60 seconds;
- own companies that employ more workers than the Fortune 500 companies combined;
- and, lastly, control 80% of household spending, buying 50% of all personal computers.
Surely ’nuff said – who’re the real heavyweights of the world is becoming clear.
And the revolution so clearly demonstrated above is reflected again in the media usage of South Africans. Newspapers have always been the domain of the male – at least perceptually. Sections are specifically aimed at males – sport takes up large chunks of editorial space, plus things of interest to “the businessman” and motoring (still a male-dominated interest) ensure that the product produced has a no-nonsense, harder (dare we say “macho”?) edge to it.
In the main this is borne out by readership profiles. But we guys are certainly under siege. The Post in KwaZulu-Natal has more female readers than male, the Sunday Tribune is as close as dammit to 50/50, and the Volksblad on the weekend also has marginally more women readers than men.
Of course, magazines as a media category have always supported far more female specialised titles than those catering for men. And Amps shows that even those which started life as “for men” are now no longer in that space – 20 years ago, if anyone had said Drum could end up with almost 200,000 more women readers than men, they would have been laughed out of court. But it’s now a fact, and the same goes for Bona, just in case you think it’s a quirk of research. (What I’d really like the answer to is how Hustler attracts 47,000 female readers).
What about electronic media? Well, all SABC stations have more female viewers than male. As does M-Net. The only station with a male bias is indeed e.tv. And, no, I can’t tell you why. I put it down to two possible reasons – the lack of an anchor soap at the time of the research, and the fact that women are less tolerant than men. How can I prove this? Well, clearly they can’t tolerate watching the hugely successful, but terribly acted, wrestling shows.
Surprisingly, radio consumption is a mixed bag. I think many people would bet that listenership is generally female biased. But such is the strength of drive-time that just about all the English and Afrikaans stations are male-dominated in terms of yesterday audience. There are notable exceptions – Lotus and RSG in particular. The African language stations on the whole have a far more balanced look about them, and this becomes truer the larger they get.
If media reflects current snapshots of the society in which it appears, we have to recognise who’s playing guitar and who’s rocking ‘n rolling. The media are catering for their market – and successfully. And the market of today is clearly not male dominated. Could we possibly sustain shows like Footballers’ Husbands, Desperate Househusbands and Show me the Daddy?
Harry Herber is group managing director of the MediaShop.