Businesses that don’t understand women are going to be left behind. J. Walter Thompson London has known this for a quite a while through its global Female Tribes Initiative.
Moreover, the female market is predicted to control a spend of more than $18 trillion in 2018.
So JWT has launched an industry first business consultancy called Female Tribes Consulting, which takes the insights and understanding from the global Female Tribes Women’s Index study (8,000 Women in 19 countries) and helps clients re-design their businesses through a female lens with its consultancy products and services.
Rachel Pashley, who has become head of Female Tribes Consulting, noted, “Everything we found in the New Femininity report and the wider Women’s Index shows us that understanding women and designing your business through a female lens is now a commercial imperative. And this requires authentic female insight, not assumption. We know that women don’t want companies to simply ‘pink it and shrink it’. Businesses simply cannot afford to keep misunderstanding this audience.”
The agency’s insights run deep – from innovation, R&D and product and service design to employee experience, consumer experience and business behaviours.
And JWT is supporting the launch with the publication of a new trends report showing that 79% of women believe we need to redefine femininity and 72% would rather be described as strong, not sweet. It also says that 64% of women prefer products designed by women because they “better understand our needs” while 88% of women wish brands and companies would realise that just because they’re women, it doesn’t mean they want to buy “girly” or “for her” products.
It has already completed a consultancy project for Forevermark, consulting on the redesign of the rings in its Tribute ring collection and is working on projects with a number of other clients.
The consultancy works on a project basis to answer client issues by offering specific products and services delivered by bespoke teams of experts and advocates. It will be overseen by James Whitehead, chief executive officer of J. Walter Thompson London, and led by Rachel Pashley with a core team made up of Ebla Salvi, Megan Van Someron, Lucy Barton and WACL Future Leader, Lucy Moody.
“This is a unique offering in the industry with unique depth of insight and knowledge,” Whitehead commented. “FT Consulting will help businesses grow by realising the Female Business Potential, a multiplier effect based on yet to be realised female audiences. This is about offering products and services that deliver business transformation, above and beyond comms.”
Key stats from The New Femininity:
- 79% of women feel that “we need to redefine femininity nowadays”,
- 93% of women feel that “femininity today has a very different meaning versus 50 years ago”
- 82% of women felt powerful as a woman
- 72% would rather be described as strong, not sweet.
- 64% of women prefer products designed by women because they “better understand our needs”
- 88% of women wish brands and companies would realise that just because they’re women, it doesn’t mean they want to buy “girly” or “for her” products
- 51% of women wish products made by women business owners were labelled more clearly
- 50% of women are the major breadwinner
Passivity among women is over. Here is the emerging language of femininity that the New Femininity report unearthed.
