Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn?
Written on 2:43 PM by Sarah
During our class discussion on Wednesday, we talked about the juxtaposition between the “Clairol” girl and the “L’Oreal” girl and how hair color consumers in the 1950s and 60s chose to be one or the other. Clairol targeted family-oriented, domestic women while L’Oreal went after women seeking glamour. This comparison reminded me of an episode of the television show “Mad Men” in which the advertising agency creates an ad for Playtex bras showcasing Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, with the tag line, “Nothing fits both sides of a woman better than Playtex.”
Even though “Mad Men” is set in the 1960s, I find that many of the marketing principles used on the show are relatable to what we learn now at McCombs, albeit with a sexist flavor most of the time. The clip below touches on at least two concepts we’ve discussed in class: (1) our discussion of customer experiences as they relate to the “True Colors” article, and (2) the tendency for customers to undervalue benefits of new products, as presented in the “Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers” article.
Video: Clip from Mad Men (Opens in a new window)
In the above video, Don Draper’s pitch to its client (Playtex) is that women are motivated by how they want to be seen by men. This fits very well with the other-directed Miss Clairol commercial discussed in the “True Colors” article. The Miss Clairol commercial alludes to a man (either a husband or boyfriend) that women who use the product are trying to impress or please. In that sense, the Playtex ad (or at least the logic behind it) is also other-directed. As Don says, “Because we want both [Marilyn and Jackie], women want to be both. It’s about how they want to be seen by us: their husbands, their boyfriends, their friends’ husbands.” Hence, the logic behind the Playtex ad is that since men want women to be both Marilyn and Jackie, women will strive to be both, and will respond to an advertisement that shows a bra that allows them to capture both personalities.
This reasoning is obviously sexist, but it illustrates the point made in class that customer experiences and how companies portray their products are affected by the time period they are in. In the time period the show is set in, it was still socially acceptable to portray the ideal woman as meek and acquiescent, and willing to please her man. More importantly, from a marketing perspective, this image still resonated with women in that time period and was therefore still effective.
Although Don’s pitch is convincing, the Playtex executives express resistance to the idea, citing the fact that their sales have been strong using their current marketing program, which emphasizes the fit of their bras (instead of trying to extend an experience to the consumer by painting an image of the kind of women who wear their bras). As the second Playtex executive says, “Let Maidenform have women’s imaginations. We’ll take their money.”
This is a clear illustration of the “9x effect” concept from the “Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers” article, which describes a mismatch of 9 to 1 between what sellers think their consumers want and what consumers actually want. In this scenario, the seller is the ad agency Sterling Cooper, who is trying to sell the Jackie/Marilyn Playtex ad (the product) to Playtex executives (the buyer). Just as the article outlines, Playtex:
- Is skeptical about the new product’s performance
- Is unable to see a need for it
- Is satisfied with what they have, and
- Sees what they have as the status quo
- Is convinced their new product will work
- Sees a need for it
- Is dissatisfied with the existing product, and
- Sees their new product as the benchmark
While it is interesting to examine advertisements and marketing programs from the 1950s and 60s from a marketing perspective (and it certainly makes for a great TV show), I can’t help but feel grateful that I live in a world that doesn’t limit who I can be to two choices based on the desires of the opposite sex. After all, where’s the fun in that?
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