Man-A-Cure: Reaching Men the Reaching Women Way?
Whenever I read about some brand launching an essay/photo contest, it’s usually a company focused on reaching women. You know the ones: “Submit an essay on your favorite mom/baby/romance/girlfriend moment, and win a year’s worth of spa treatments/diapers/roses/yogurt.” That’s why I took notice of the clever play on the more womanly-seeming term, “pedicure,” in the new Sears/Craftsman Father’s Day promotion. As Aaron Baar wrote for MediaPost, their man-a-cure is the $1,000 worth of Craftsman tools they will give the ten winners (oh-so akin to a foot massage and bright red toenails…).
While this marketing approach is an innovative way to try to engage men, and does seem to find success with the women’s market (submitting essays for prizes, I mean), will it translate for guys? I wonder how many men will take the time to write even a 100-word essay (the first paragraph of this post is 93 words) and bother to take an essay-related photo.
As I was writing this post, I got into a Twitter conversation with Steve Harbour, a friend who is a dad and freelance copywriter (thus, he has an advertising-oriented mind), about this promotion. His take was just as I’d suspect it might be for a lot of guys I know:
It sounds pretty good, but I wish the contest was more engaging. A 100-word essay seems a little ho-hum, a bit like homework for just $1000 of tools. Don’t get me wrong I’d love $1k worth of tools, but I’m not sure I’d take the time to compose an essay for it. Even making it a video contest where the kids had to lobby for their Dads would be more interesting to me. Sears could use them on their site and it promotes Dads spending time with their kids.
The name Man-A-Cure is pretty clever and I expected a contest that would follow suit.
So did I. Hmmm.
To avoid such a disconnect, Sears might have dug a little deeper. If they’d done research to understand the group of men they were trying to reach, I bet those guys would have guided the brand toward a more relevant, and clever, contest.
One more thought: As far as focusing on tool-interested consumers, in particular, there’s also a physicality/experience involved that might be leveraged. Craftsman could have developed an offline event involving labor or strength-testing. They could take videos and use those clips as the entries or somesuch. The events themselves could be held at Sears stores, or, better yet, in partnership with existing events where tool-fans might already be hanging out (kids baseball games? local car racing?).
Or, as Steve mentioned, emphasize the “father” as well as the “tools” and come up with something dads can do WITH their kids to participate.
Do you see what I’m getting at? Whomever you are marketing to, the best idea is to be in their path and in context with the way they might buy or use your product. Don’t make people go out of their way to participate in your promotion. And, this goes for brands pitching man-a-cures or pedicures.
