The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Childless women seek equality in marketing
Advertisers embrace many, but some feel left out in the cold.
Even as advertisers are embracing new configurations of families — two dads, say, or grandparents raising grandchildren — there’s one group that feels left out.
Women who are childless. Or as they also call themselves, the child-free. Or even the NotMoms.
According to census figures, more women in the United States are childless than at any other time since the government began keeping track in 1976. Nearly half of women — 47.6 percent — between the ages of 15 and 44 did not have children in 2014, up from 46.5 percent in 2012. And 15.3 percent of women ages 40 to 44 are childless. The numbers are growing internationally as well.
Despite these statistics, “the majority of marketing talks to adult women like they are all moms or want to be mothers,” said Adrianna Bevilaqua, chief creative officer at M Booth, a public relations company.
Melanie Notkin has made a career of catering to women who don’t have children but love them — she is the founder of the website SavvyAuntie; coined the term “professional aunt, no kids,” or PANKs; and is the author of “Otherhood: Modern Women Finding a New Kind of Happiness.” She wonders why companies, always eager to target a potentially lucrative demographic, seem to be ignoring this one.
The childless woman is “left off the table,” Notkin said. “Advertisers don’t know how to pitch to her.”
Maria Bailey, chief executive of the marketing firm BSM Media and an author of books about marketing to mothers, estimates that about 60 percent of all women shown in commercials are moms; with certain products, like toys, the percentage is much higher.
One issue is simple inertia — for years advertisers have followed research that says the mother is the main household purchaser. Bailey said mothers spent $3.4 trillion in 2015, “the largest spending consumer group in the U.S.”
Another issue is how to portray the concept of being childless. If two women are sitting on the couch chatting about, say, yogurt or a smartphone, who knows, or even cares, if they have children?
“It’s an extremely complex subject,” said Bridget Brennan, chief executive of the Female Factor, a consulting firm, and author of “Why She Buys.” “Women may be childless by choice or by chance. It’s very difficult to define assumptions about this market.”
It’s true that people tend to view those who choose not to have children differently from those who can’t have children. Those who are single and childless are perceived differently from couples without children.
But Karen Malone Wright, who founded the website TheNotMom. com, said it was less about differentiating between all these factors and more about being inclusive. Wright, who is 60 and married and does not have children, ran the first NotMom summit meeting last year in Cleveland, where she lives.
“For example, it seems that vacation advertising focuses on the extremes of female travelers — you’re hot and single, or a mom with more than one child,” she said. “You’re not older, you’re not with a girlfriend.
A report by Notkin and DeVries Global, a public relations and marketing company, noted that women without children spend on average twice as much on beauty- and hair-related products a month than their counterparts with children do; they also spend 60 percent more days abroad.
Perhaps more surprisingly, women who don’t have children also spend 35 percent more on groceries per person a month than mothers do. It’s not clear why, but Heidi Hovland, chief executive of DeVries, said it might be because childless women and couples are buying more premium food items than families are, because groceries aren’t “about what the kids will and won’t eat.”
There have been some successful campaigns aimed at this group. In 2014, the Westin New York Grand Central hotel ran a promotion called “Womanhood Redefined,” aimed at women without children and including a consultation about healthful eating with the hotel’s executive chef and its running expert.
Companies are discovering that it can pay to dip into the childfree pond. The Westin package generated “tremendous social media exposure and buzz for the Westin Grand Central,” along with 420 inquiries about the package, said Bob Jacobs, vice president for brand management at Westin Hotels & Resorts North America. It has offered similar packages at some of its other hotels.
The TD Bank Group came across Notkin’s PANKs research and decided to see how it applied to Canadian women by commissioning a study of 6,149 women without children.
It found that nearly 6 in 10 Canadian women without children said they had a close relationship with a niece or nephew, or child of a friend. And while they shower these children with gifts and outings, they don’t necessarily set up trusts or savings accounts for them.
TD Bank used this information to target national and regional media and to educate its own advisers on “how to help them think in a different way when talking to professional women” said Sandy Cimoroni, senior vice president for shared services and chief operating officer of TD Wealth. That means urging them to set a little — or a lot — aside for that special child in their life.
According to census figures, more women in the United States are childless than at any other time since the government began keeping track in 1976.