Hello I’m Venus has the USP of which most people are afraid. Good on it – and clearly, good for it. As a commercial creative, you understand the power of a strong single-minded idea, right?
Directors, Bec Brideson & Miles Mainwaring
TS: Where did the idea for an agency that gets women come from and is the woman’s tone of voice deliberate…?
VENUS: Women are the fastest growing female economy in the world. Despite their enormous and growing financial importance, women are not really being listened to, understood and taken seriously by marketers.
Over the last 50 or so years, women have become more financially independent than any time previously in history and joined the workforce in equal numbers. Technology changed, communications changed and the need to reach women became more important.
But our advertising industry didn’t change.
Sadly, for whatever reasons, there are still only 3% of female creative directors in the world. The planning tools used by most agencies and marketers to generate insights have hardly evolved from their inception in the 1950’s. At its heart, marketing remains a science with a masculine DNA, built on competition, battles and hierarchies.
Our premise is to help brands build empathetic connection with their female customers. Any agency worth its mettle should have planning tools that consider and account for differences in core gender motivations.
TS: How much courage did it take to launch Hello I’m Venus?
VENUS (Bec Brideson, director): It was easy to launch the agency, albeit a much tougher gig in the early days to win new clients and build the business to a scale where I had the resources to deliver on the potential.
Australia is a conservative market, and our early experiences found that many businesses could not see the opportunity, or viewed the ‘women thing’ as a niche exercise. We just had to keep knocking on doors, preaching the opportunity, and merchandising success stories. We’ve found challenger brands more receptive to our pitch – people who need to shake up the status quo and do something different to get growth.
Childwise 2 by HelloImVenus from HelloImVenus on Vimeo.
The explosion in social media in the late 2000’s was a watershed for our business. Clients and categories that had been dubious of marketing to women suddenly experienced the power and influence of their female customers in the social space. Social media is a very feminine space, and women are the chief brand amplifiers in it.
TS: Miles, you’re a bloke. How hard is it to be a bloke saying, “I get women.”
VENUS (Miles Mainwaring, director): Our agency isn’t some girls-only club. Being a women is not a prerequisite to being an effective marketer to women. I am a planner, and I am curious and inquisitive by nature. I believe marketers do a mediocre job in understanding and catering to women. I never will completely understand women, and that is half the fun. What I am passionate about doing, personally and for our clients, is to work out the right questions to ask to find out what women really want. Three quarters of success is asking the right questions. We usually start by challenging assumptions about what women want, or how they behave, asking why and opening our minds to say ‘what if?’
TS: You have a USP. How important do you think it is for brands to have a USP?
VENUS: There are a lot of generalists who get it right. At least 20 big agencies in Australia are awesome. They all claim to have bigger and better creative than the next agency. That’s great. We have a strong audience-centric positioning that recognises a strong economic force. We’re not for everyone. And that’s the point.
Moonee Valley Night Racing from HelloImVenus on Vimeo.
Our positioning seems to rile my seasoned competitors, and a lot of them are disparaging and dismissive about our choice to be brave and do the very thing they advise their own clients to do – which is to focus.
Agencies and marketers mistake this as a war on gender. It’s not at all – it is an audience specialisation that recognises an un-met need. We’ve proven on multiple occasions that our gender-specific approach is even helpful to ‘gender neutral’ brands in better understanding and segmenting their audiences.
TS: Give me two examples that shows what sets you apart.
VENUS: Every client challenge we’ve touched we’ve turned into market share advantage. From a 33% increase in sales with fast-fashion chain Dotti, to 30% increase in household penetration of Lean Cuisine. 130,000 Facebook fans (achieving 170,000 new household trials of a mature brand with on 28% market penetration with no discounting) on Libra, to a doubling of hits to website Kidspot.
TS: Is it more important for a brand to be useful, desirable or clever?
VENUS (Brideson): Can I choose all 3? A vacuum cleaner is useful, but a brand like Dyson makes it desirable through clever design. If you can achieve the holy trinity, absolutely!
TS: Which media do you tend to favour and why?
VENUS: Women work across 4 screens these days – so however we get her attention, as long as we get to her.
TS: What would your now selves say to your starting out selves?
VENUS (Brideson): Our generalist friends will tell you that Australia is a niche’, so why hunt a niche’ within a niche’? Being a specialist requires bravery. But it gives you a point of view, an area of expertise beyond saying “we’re really creative.”
I’ve made all the usual mistakes, but I guess if I had to speak to my start-up self today I’d say “well done – hang in there. You’re right, and it will be worth it.”
TS: Where do you want to be this time next year?
VENUS: We’d love to keep growing at the rate we have been for the past 3 – 4 years. Any slower I’d get itchy feet. Any faster those growing pains could get a little out of hand.
TS: May I please have a comment from one of your two boy staff about ‘working with a bunch of women.”
1. “What footy betting competition?”
2. “I had no idea women joked around, said crass things, and could make me blush so much. They are funny, foul-mouthed and fiercer than a lot of guys I worked with… Then again, when we’re pitching or busy, or doing long hours – the girls are awesome to crash through it with. “
3. “I grew up with sisters, my mum is a woman and even my girlfriend is… but some of the stuff we think through blows me away. Little things make a big difference in here to how we say it, how it looks. It’s not just a niche or a sensitivity, it’s actually extremely scientific.”
