Preface

What Is the She Spot?

A few years ago during the 2004 election, a coalition of get-out-the-vote organizations asked Lisa Witter to advise them on their “Women’s Voting Day” campaign, including the beta design for the campaign’s Web site.

When she clicked on the URL, the home page was wreathed in pink flowers. The content was focused exclusively on choice and “soft” issues like education and healthcare to the exclusion of issues like the War in Iraq, jobs, and national security—issues that polling showed were, in fact, top-of-mind for the majority of women voters.

The coalition deserved credit for identifying women as an important target audience. But then they hit two blind spots that, as communications consultants for the public sector, we see all too often: One, by relegating their outreach to women to a single “day,” they were missing out on an enormous opportunity to connect with the demographic powerhouse that has shaped presidential elections for the past 20 years. Two, their efforts to appeal to women were off the mark, reflecting a poor understanding of what women actually care about and respond to.

We wrote this book to correct these blind spots and find the She Spot instead. By “She Spot,” we mean taking to heart this central truth: Women are not a niche audience. They are the audience. Losing these blind spots and finding the She Spot starts with recognizing that women are the single most important market opportunity for changing the world. This is something that many nonprofit organizations know intuitively, but have yet to fully explore or harness.

By taking a closer look at women as the target market for change, you may discover some new insights. Among them:

• As philanthropists and donors, women take more risks than men. They’re more likely to give to a new or less well-known organization they believe is truly making a difference than, say, their alma mater, a museum, or other well-established institution.
• Women are more distrustful of the political process than are men. This is reflected in their giving: they’re more likely to donate to nonprofit organizations than to political candidates.
• Women do not use a gender lens when choosing their favorite candidate. They won’t favor a female candidate over a male one just because she’s a woman.
• When it comes to women’s voting preferences, marital status trumps many other factors, including age, education level, and motherhood. In other words, a single woman in her 30s is more likely to vote in sync with an older widow than a married thirtysomething mom.
• More women than men are online today, and more women are blogging.
• African American women give more than white women, but get actively solicited for donations less often.

Our own work with women’s foundations and donor-advised funds suggests that women are especially invested in addressing the root causes of social ills, such as poverty, childhood obesity, or pollution in our drinking water. This willingness to confront and insist on change at the structural level, versus applying short-term Band-Aids to temper the symptoms, should make every nonprofit that lives by the same creed prick up its ears.

We hope the gender differences discussed in this book will provide you with a deeper understanding of the mindset of women so you become xvii sawier “She Spotters” and more effective at cultivating women’s support to scale the greater good you want to see in the world.

In our work as communications consultants, our initial conversation with new and prospective nonprofit clients invariably comes down to two key questions: What is your goal? and Who is your target audience?

The goal varies depending on the organization. It can involve preventing a dangerous gas plant from being built near a wetlands sanctuary or raising funds for disaster relief. But there is often one unwavering constant: fundraising and action are critical for success. Great, we say. What does your average donor look like? Who makes up your membership base?

Whether the organization is an environmental group, a social welfare fund, or a progressive political organization, the answer is women.

The She Spot grew out of a combination of our frustration, our hope, and our belief that women are an untapped, unsung yet essential force for transformative social change in our world—a force that is needed today more than ever before.

Frustration, because too many who work in the public sector are not connecting the dots between the change they want to see in the world and the people most likely to realize that change. We want to help make that connection.

Hope, because in the field of international development, it is now a widely accepted fact that investing in women is the single most effective strategy for rebuilding nations torn apart by war and other violent conflicts. In Rwanda, the 1994 genocide that claimed more than 800,000 lives, most of them men and boys, left the nation with a population that was 70 percent female. It was up to the women to rebuild the economy, the government, and the future of the country. Women became breadwinners, taking on jobs traditionally held by men.

Before the genocide, the government was just over five percent female. Today, the Rwandan Lower House of Parliament is nearly half women, the highest percentage of women in any parliament in the world. Girls and young women are attending school and college in record numbers. Many of them are the same women who were gang-raped, who saw their families butchered before their eyes, and who lost entire social networks to mass slaughter. Yet they are rebuilding their communities, taking in one orphan at a time, weaving one basket at a time, passing one piece of legislation at a time. Their resilience and fortitude in the face of xviii unfathomable tragedy has produced an incredible come-back story of national transformation.

It takes nothing away from these remarkable women in Rwanda to say that this is something women, who are the glue that holds communities together, have done throughout history, and continue to do today in many nations struggling to come back from war. Professionals who work in international development often say that the key to lifting communities is to invest in women. This is not rhetoric for the sake of annual fundraising appeals. It is an on-the-ground reality and pragmatic policy. In our own country, it is women who are often holding families together in communities ruptured by the War on Drugs, or holding down the fort and taking care of business as their husbands fight wars overseas. There is no “over there” versus “back here” split when it comes to jumpstarting social transformation. Women are at the center. The difference lies in how women catalyze, or fail to catalyze, their power.

This book is also a product of our belief—belief that the public sector could borrow a few pages from the business sector’s playbook when it comes to marketing to women. Innovators in the corporate world understand that women are behind more than 80 percent of all consumer purchases and all health care-related decisions for their families, which is why many companies have begun to retool their marketing campaigns to appeal to this critical audience with a level of sophistication that goes well beyond painting their products pink.

These are lessons the nonprofits and political operatives ignore at their own peril. As we’ll reveal in these pages, women’s contributions to philanthropy, to determining elections, and to volunteering make them an essential “get” for those of us committed to making the world a better place.

That said, you don’t have to be a nonprofit professional or a staffer on a political campaign to gain something from reading this book. The ideas and tactics we explore are also meant for individuals who are interested in how social and political change is achieved and what it will take to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing us today, from global warming to stopping nuclear proliferation. This book is also meant for individuals who are engaged in making change at the community level, either by serving on community boards, at church, or with the local PTA. In each of these instances, we’ll show how hitting the She Spot can move the needle and make a difference.

What You’ll Find in These Pages

This book is divided into three parts. In Part I, we make the case for why centering your marketing efforts around the She Spot—women—is an essential strategy for advancing your cause. In Part II, we show you how to effectively connect to women so they become your partners in social change, and in Part III, we look at where to reach them.

The Introduction explains how the business world has caught on that women are the most important consumer market and what the public sector has to gain from following the same path. In Chapter 1, we discuss why going after the women’s market is essential for any social change effort by describing how women can tip the balance for fundraising, activism, changing social behaviors, and winning elections.

Chapter 2 digs deeper into the neurological and psychological research that helps to explain the similarities and differences between how women and men think. We then describe how these differences shape what matters to them in life and their decision-making and how you can use this knowledge to help cultivate women’s support for your issues and causes.

What matters to women is the subject of Chapter 3, which takes a look at polling data and other sources that tell us what women’s social priorities are and how these priorities are shaped by their roles at home and at work.

In Part II, we put theory into action by showing you how the ideas outlined in Part I can be practically applied based on four core principles: care, connect, cultivate, and control. We show you that by keeping these principles top of mind, you will hit the She Spot and market to women more effectively.

Chapter 4 discusses women’s profound capacity for empathy and how to harness it as a force for change. We offer concrete ideas for how to speak to her heart through dramatic storytelling, humor, and appealing to her sense of group identity.

Women place a high value on relationships. Chapter 5 describes how to actively create community as a catalyst for activism and fundraising. We show how “high touch” campaigns can help recruit women—and men—for your cause and why this approach will yield greater, long-term returns than traditional membership appeals.

Fundraising professionals will tell you that women often require more time and effort to win over. Chapter 6 explains women are worth xi it because once they’re on board, they are loyal and incredible word-ofmouth foot soldiers. This chapter offers strategies for cultivating women’s participation and leadership by speaking directly to their concerns and expectations. We argue that meeting the “higher bar” that women set for everything from consumer products to causes increasingly reflects the same expectations that funders and donors are setting for potential grantees.

Chapter 7 is about control and how putting a woman in the driver’s seat will make her your powerful ally for doing good. We describe a woman’s day-to-day reality and how her concerns and priorities shape her bottom line. We offer concrete marketing strategies that will help leverage her “can do” confidence and make activism and giving a natural extension of her busy life, instead of something that falls off her long todo list.

In Part III, we offer a road map for finding the She Spot by reaching women where they are. In Chapter 8, we examine the media sources women rely on for information as well as their behaviors and preferences as consumers of mainstream media and as members of the rapidly evolving online community.

While the central argument of the book requires that we make some pointed generalizations about women and what makes them tick, we acknowledge that no two women are alike. In Chapter 9, we turn a microlens at the women’s demographic by segmenting them along important life stages and identifying how milestones in a woman’s life can open new opportunities for marketing change. We also examine the growing influence of the emerging majority—African American and Asian American women and Latinas—and offer advice on how to achieve effective, culturally fluent outreach, while avoiding the pitfalls.

Each chapter illustrates key marketing principles, with real-life case studies drawn from both the business and nonprofit sectors to give you concrete ideas that will translate to the world of good causes. In addition, each chapter explains which adjustments you must make to account for the important differences between the two worlds.

In the concluding chapter, we take a speculative look into the future by posing the question: What if women’s “we’re all in this together” way of thinking became the driving force behind social transformation? If we were to replace the dominant social paradigm of “Survival of the Fittest” with another, “Survival of the Connected,” what impact would it have in our social evolution, and how would it affect our ability to take on the biggest challenges facing us today, from global warming to terrorism? We make the argument that marketing and privileging the values most commonly associated with women—cooperation and community among them—has the power to change the way we govern and to transform the very fiber and function of our role as protectors of our planet’s future.

While we touch on research and the latest brain science that illuminate the differences between men and women, this book is not meant to be a thorough scientific analysis of these gender differences. Similarly, while a portion of the book provides analyses of a few key sub-groups within the female demographic, we acknowledge that our analysis is not exhaustive. For example, we do not segment our analysis along other lines, such as geographic differences, diverse faiths, or sexual orientation. While these segments are important, we have chosen to drill down on key audiences (women of color, single women, and mothers among them) that we believe are the most likely to be useful for the largest swath of nonprofit organizations and political campaigns seeking to absorb and apply to their own work the strategies and tactics described here. In defining these parameters, we fully acknowledge that each of the topics and audiences described above is fully deserving of exploration, but they are, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this book.

Finally, while this book is aimed primarily at helping social change workers market more effectively to women, we hope to illuminate two things in the process: One, when we don’t examine how marketing, advertising, and other communications campaigns work or don’t work along gender lines, this lack of scrutiny can perpetuate business-as-usual assumptions that tend to privilege male preferences and perspectives. Two, marketing to women results in an inclusive, rather than exclusive, strategy for reaching men, too, thanks to ways that women typically make decisions to support and otherwise take action on behalf of the causes they care about.

Why Listen to Us?

Our views and expertise in marketing social causes is shaped by a combined 25 years’ experience in the field of nonprofit communications, including more than 20 years as senior strategists at Fenton Communications. In the 1980s, David Fenton started the company to go head-to-head with public relations campaigns waged by corporate flacks, front groups, and right-wing spin-meisters, who were molding public opinion on everything from nuclear energy in our neighborhoods to environmental toxins in our food.

A lot has changed in two decades. We’ve been fortunate to be in either the driver’s or passenger’s seat as social change advocates used communications to secure legislative, legal, and court-of-public-opinion victories.

One of the things we love about our jobs as consultants is that we’re allowed to immerse ourselves in the work of so many different nonprofits, influencing an amazing range of issues that we care about. The constant change-up that comes with the territory gives us a broad and eclectic outlook.

Lisa Witter is the daughter of a union mill worker and a Vietnam veteran diesel mechanic manager, who taught her the ethics of hard work and the value of family, social justice, and community service—values that were reinforced at the church she went to while growing up in Everett, Washington. As a youth, she was active in soccer, volleyball, basketball, and softball—it was on the field and court where she first learned teamwork, strategy, and how to play to win. Since then, she has married her passion for people and competitive spirit with the art of politics, working in the political sector to fight for systemic progressive social change.

Lisa W.’s career encompasses a variety of experiences, from her stint as campaign manager for the first Latina to run for statewide office in her home state of Washington, running a successful national campaign to stop the privatization of Social Security, and as one of 10 candidates on the Showtime reality show, American Candidate, to her role as a political and social commentator and speaker at conferences and universities across the country. She is passionate about communications and believes that the social change sector must hone its communications skills to effectively realize concrete victories for people. As chief operating officer of Fenton Communications, she has led and grown the largest public interest communications firm in the country, consulting on a broad range of domestic and international issues including women’s and refugee rights, environmental protection, public health, socially responsible business, working family and union issues, civic participation, and more.

Lisa Chen’s perspectives and grounding in social change work have been heavily shaped by her family’s experience as immigrants from Taiwan. Her mother, who left high school to raise two daughters, went back to school at the University of California, Berkeley and became a software engineer. Her stepfather, the son of a factory worker in a small town outside Birmingham, Alabama, joined the army during the Vietnam War, where he learned Chinese and developed a passion for Chinese furniture making. Her parents’ earlier struggles—and their will to reinvent themselves—fuel her optimism and her drive to do social justice work.

Lisa C.’s love for language and belief in the power of words as tools of truth and persuasion can be attributed in part to having to learn English at the age of five. She worked for many years in public interest communications as a publicist for Communications Works, a San Francisco-based nonprofit public relations organization, where she managed a number of campaigns on immigration and welfare policy reform, environmental justice, affirmative action, breast cancer, and affordable housing. As a senior vice president at Fenton, she is the firm’s senior writer and editor, developing campaign messages and strategy on a broad range of issues including international public health, human rights, education, environmental protection, and the arts. Before getting into progressive communications, Lisa C. was a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News.

In writing this book, it was our intention to act as both guides and translators between the private and public sectors, offering our perspectives, insights, and analysis on how social change agents can use marketing to promote and advance social causes and to inspire others to do good. It is our hope that by putting women more firmly at the center of communications efforts, we will help nonprofit organizations and political campaigns exponentially raise their effectiveness in creating a better world.

This book represents much more than an accumulation of our own ideas and experiences. We are in debt to the many smart communicators and marketing experts who were generous enough to share their wisdom with us.

Many books have been written about how to harness the potential of women consumers as an economic opportunity. This is the first book devoted to springing open the potential and power of women as our greatest opportunity for social change. Social and political trends of the past 15 years have created palpable momentum behind the idea that women’s time is now. She’s setting the pace. It’s up to us to keep up—and spot her.