It may seem an odd question when were talking about a brand. Considering that brands are things, not people, it seems silly to assign them a gender identity.

And yet, research shows that we do see gender signals from branding. In the article "Why Do We Get So Emotional About Brands?" Andrew O'Connell says,

"But obviously brands do send out gender signals, and sometimes they’re quite strong. In fact, recent research shows that the more intense the gender signals, the greater the brand value — so not only do we readily perceive gender in brands, we like to perceive gender in brands."

Consumers clearly like thinking of brands as male or female and there is a strong motivation for marketers working with a brand to use gender classification to connect more clearly with their customers. There is a strong financial motivation behind this reasoning. A recent study with 130,000 customers and 140 brands showed that "consumers ascribe a higher value to brands that can easily be classified as either masculine of feminine." The emotional context of a brand goes even further extending "personality" traits to brands:  adventurous, aggressive, brave, daring, dominant, typically as masculine personalities; with fragile, graceful, sensitive, and sweet as feminine. 

An unclear or incorrectly assigned gender identity can negatively impact the brand and complicate the efforts of both marketing and sales teams. I worked with a product that had been designed originally as a sporty, male product. All the branding was clearly masculine; color choices, design cues, taglines, etc. The verbiage in the copy of the packaging, website information, and all the marketing collateral confirmed this giving the brand a distinctly masculine "personality". As the distribution of the product grew, some new channels presented a surprising demographic for the brand and over time, the biggest opportunity for the line was entirely female.

To introduce the product to women, sales people were hiding the product packaging and marketing materials. The sales pitch being used in the field was completely different, featuring softer more traditionally "feminine" traits, beauty, sensuality, etc. In order to help sales, we tweaked the wording and graphic elements of the collateral to be more aligned with this new customer base. But without a full product redesign, any time customers saw the packaging the "masculine" image could put them off and discourage the sale.

Now the brand faced costly options of re-branding or losing the new sales opportunity, neither one ideal for the company. The male fan base of original customers would clearly be disappointed and may loose interest with a completely different, unrecognizable branding. The new potential female customers may not fully engage with a brand they simply do not identify with.

When faced with building a brand one way or another we must realize that the very positioning we establish to promote sales may also shut off other opportunities. Here are a few questions to help you consider or forget about gender-specific branding.

• Does your product have a gender specific customer demographic?
• Would the opposite gender provide a viable customer base, perhaps more focused, more niche? 
• Would your brand benefit from a clearly defined gender identity?
• How would the gender identity help or hinder sales efforts? 
• What branding, including marketing collateral, copy, design, logos, artwork, could you include helping reinforce this gender identity?

For help with your branding support for marketing, contact us today.