The battle of the sexes has been played out on almost every field imaginable, including direct marketing. Direct recently talked with Kasha Lewis, senior associate director of Wunderman’s New York-based Strategy and Insights Group, about what women really want marketers to know about them.

Wunderman compiled research on the topic from proprietary data collected in the agency’s quarterly Brand Experience Scorecard survey, which looks at the quality of the relationship consumers have with brands.

DIRECT: How do attitudes toward brands vary by gender?

LEWIS: There was a part of me that wondered if the basic DNA of how women approach relationships was different from men. The first thing we found that was really interesting was the basic structure of the relationship doesn’t change. What they’re looking for in the relationship doesn’t change dramatically between men and women. But there are things that marketers do that alienate women from relationships.

DIRECT: Like what?

LEWIS: They’ll often try to ‘help’ a woman, assuming that she’s helpless. One of the great examples of a brand that’s been able to overcome this is Home Depot. They really talk about empowering and teaching women. They have special programs and events to show women how to do things. An interesting contrast to that is how Radio Shack approaches it. They’re both kind of male-oriented environments. The way Radio Shack approaches it is, “You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers.” It’s a much more dependent relationship than the way Home Depot handles it, which is, “You want to know something, we’re going to teach you how to do it so you can do it yourself.”

Another theme we noticed was that a brand would look at a woman in a very specific context. The woman is either a mother or a professional, but they don’t necessarily consider all the different elements that make up a woman. Certainly in cosmetics we see that quite a bit. We took a look at some different cosmetic brands and the one that stood out was Avon. They really look at [a woman] holistically, like she’s more than just a face. She has a family and they have products for the family, they have health and well-being products. They very much work with her in a way that makes her complete, vs. a Clairol or a L’Oréal that is very specifically considering the way she looks.

DIRECT: Are women more brand loyal?

LEWIS: We didn’t find any evidence of that, which I found very interesting. I assumed that we were going to find that, but there’s no evidence to say they’re any more or less brand loyal than men.

The battle of the sexes has been played out on almost every field imaginable, including direct marketing. Direct recently talked with Kasha Lewis, senior associate director of Wunderman’s New York-based Strategy and Insights Group, about what women really want marketers to know about them.

Wunderman compiled research on the topic from proprietary data collected in the agency’s quarterly Brand Experience Scorecard survey, which looks at the quality of the relationship consumers have with brands.<> Lewis will present a session on women’s attitudes towards brands at the Direct Marketing Association of Washington Annual Conference and Exposition, to be held May 6-7 at the Washington Convention Center. Other speakers will include Thomas L. Phillips, chairman and founder of Phillips International, and Dale A. Petroskey, president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Nearly 2000 attendees are expected at the conference. For more information, visit www.dmaw.org.

DIRECT: How do attitudes toward brands vary by gender?

LEWIS: There was a part of me that wondered if the basic DNA of how women approach relationships was different from men. The first thing we found that was really interesting was the basic structure of the relationship doesn’t change. What they’re looking for in the relationship doesn’t change dramatically between men and women. But there are things that marketers do that alienate women from relationships.

DIRECT: Like what?

LEWIS: They’ll often try to ‘help’ a woman, assuming that she’s helpless. One of the great examples of a brand that’s been able to overcome this is Home Depot. They really talk about empowering and teaching women. They have special programs and events to show women how to do things. An interesting contrast to that is how Radio Shack approaches it. They’re both kind of male oriented environments. The way Radio Shack approaches it is “You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers.” It’s a much more dependent relationship than the way Home Depot approaches it, which is “you want to know something, we’re going to teach you how to do it so you can do it yourself.”

Another theme we noticed was that a brand would look at a woman in a very specific context. The woman is either a mother or a professional, but they don’t necessarily consider all the different elements that make up a woman. Certainly in cosmetics we see that quite a bit. We took a look at some different cosmetic brands and the one that stood out was Avon. They really look at [women] holistically, like she’s more than just a face. She has a family and they have products for the family, they have health and well-being products. They very much work with her in a way that makes her complete, versus a Clairol or a Loreal that is very specifically looking at the way she looks.

DIRECT: Are women more brand loyal?

LEWIS: We didn’t find any evidence of that, which I found very interesting. I assumed that we were going to find that, but there’s no evidence to say they’re any more or less brand loyal than men.