WHAT WOMEN REALLY WANT
Nice men have always tried to get to grips
with what women want. You can imagine, in ancient times, your
caring cave man squatting over a beast he’s just speared
and wondering anxiously if his missus wants the kidneys as
well as the chops because he really, really wants to please
her.
On the other hand, your uncaring hunter would have been keener
to please himself, simply assuming the little woman would
be grateful for anything he happened to drag home.
But today, everyone cares about what women want. We are in
an unprecedented position of power.
Why? Because we are the major keepers of the household wallet.
Pleasing us is crucial because it’s our buying power
that keeps economies and nations humming.
Women, say the world’s market researchers, are responsible
for around 85% of all household purchases. Those who run big
businesses are acutely aware of us and our wants.
'This is a new era for feminine power,” says the CEO
of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, Kevin Roberts. “Deep
emotional connections are where it's at and every company
has to be up for it.”
No longer are luxury cars bought only by well-heeled men.
"Women form an increasingly important customer group,”
says the president and CEO of Volvo, Hans-Olov Olsson.
And highly paid business coaches like marketing guru Tom Peters
are touring the world telling business seminar audiences:
“What is business opportunity number one? In a single
word, women. Women are premier business opportunities for
anyone and everyone.”
And so the big question, “what do women want?”
is asked in every place that people make business decisions
- from boardrooms to bars, around coffee tables and campfires.
Sophisticated research programmes are analysing us to death
so that ad agencies can hit the spot every time they create
a campaign. The latest trend is for big companies to fret
over whether their brands are loaded with enough warm fuzzies
to be considered a “Lovemark” – a term created
at Saatchi’s to describe the next step beyond branding.
“Lovemarks reach your heart as well as your mind, creating
an intimate, emotional connection that you just can’t
live without,” coos the blurb at www.lovemarks.com.
Apparently it’s no longer enough for products to be
well-made and serviceable because, hell, we expect nothing
else from modern manufacturers. Goods must also be imbued
with attributes like mystery, sensuality, commitment, empathy
and passion before we jaded consumers will respect and embrace
them.
Now, as everyone works harder to supply what we want, every
female consumer can expect to be wooed even more ardently.
It’s very complicated of course, because we women are
such complex creatures. No standard labels can be slapped
on us because our lives change so much from decade to decade.
There are also sub-groups within each age group.
For instance, a woman at 25 can be single, adventurous and
free-spending or be home-based with a baby or two and restricted
to a budget. Their needs, wants and dreams will be very different.
In general, we tend to pass through the following stages:
In your late teens and 20s … you’re pushing through
your formal education, striking out in your working life and
forging your adult path. You also love dressing up and living
it up, adore new gadgets, can’t live without texting
and are enjoying (or planning) overseas adventure. Your social
life is strong and the right guy is just around the corner.
Your student loan may be a dead weight still, but this era
is all about heading into a promising future. What you most
want now is excitement and romance.
In your 30s … maybe you’re partnered up by now.
You could be having babies, or desperately trying for one
before it’s too late. You’ve moved on from the
high-adventure 20s and possibly want different things now
– a place for kids to play and a good school down the
road. You may be in your first or second home. You’re
working hard too, aiming for promotion or business success
so you can pay for it all, but it feels like the effort’s
worth it as you begin to settle and consolidate. What you
most want now is partnership and family.
In your 40s… you may be in our busiest parenting years,
coping with teenagers or toddlers, probably even more pressured
at work, and struggling to pay mortgage, taxes and credit
card bills and finding that children’s needs are even
more expensive and time-consuming than when they were little.
This decade might be your most demanding
yet and you’re starting to gasp for fun and relaxation
because there may not be much of it around. What you most
want now is more time for yourself.
In your 50s… maybe you might be easing off a bit, but
could also be coming to terms with the sobering idea that
this point in your career is as good as it’s going to
get, and there are yet more pressures to cope with. Health
issues might crop up. Suddenly, retirement is only a decade
away and that’s really scary. Not paid off the mortgage
yet? Help. Still got kids at home? Help. Now your parents
are needing extra care? Help. What you most want now is more
energy.
Of course, your life may not follow that conventional course
at all. Maybe you’re more interested in work than family.
Maybe you’ve had a marriage or two, or none at all.
Maybe Mr Right has turned out to be all wrong and plans you’ve
laid have drifted into confusion.
All of us do share one constant goal in wanting a body that
serves us well. It may not be beautiful, but we want it at
least to be strong and lithe.
We trust it to keep on carrying on and of course we need positive
attitude and equipment to reach that goal – like gym
memberships and running shoes and personal trainers.
You can bet that even as you read this, people are planning
for all these wants of ours to be met to the max. And of course
we’ll keep on being responsive to their efforts because
we want to be well fed, housed, educated, entertained and
transported wherever we want to go, whether it’s driving
to the local café for lunch with the girls or flying
to Europe for a dream holiday.
As a society, we’ve long been good at blurring the line
between our needs and wants. There are only a few things we
really need for an adequate life. But ‘adequate’
doesn’t cut it for any of us in the 21st century. The
fun starts with the stuff we really want, which of course
we still call “needing”.
As in, I need those lovely shoes, I need the new drapes in
the living room, I need a mondo grass in the garden. Oh, and
also, I need a DVD player, that sexy phone, the long weekend
in Sydney, dinner at that hot café and the new hairstyle.
All of which, as we all know, can make us feel great. For
a while. But is the ability to buy lovely things what we really,
really want?
There’s a lovely Shrek-type tale that addresses the
problem of what women want. It’s an old story about
King Arthur. Out riding one day he is attacked and knocked
to the ground by a rival. The winning knight is about to finish
him off when he has second thoughts and tells Arthur he’ll
spare his life if he can answer just one question.
‘Yes, yes,’ yelps Arthur. ‘What is it?’
‘I want to know what it is that women really want,’
says the rival, warning Arthur that he has just one year to
come up with the answer. If he fails, he loses his head.
Arthur rides away smiling, full of confidence. How hard can
the question be? Strangely though, all his friends are clueless,
though he does hear whispers that just one person in his kingdom
might know – a wise but hideous witch.
All out of options, he finally goes to her cave. She says
she’ll share the secret, but on one condition –
that he arranges a marriage between her and Prince Gawain,
Arthur’s most handsome knight.
‘No problem’, cries Arthur, appalled for Gawain
but also aware that if he fails to find the right answer,
he’s doomed. ‘It’s easy,’ cackles
the hag. ‘What women want is to be in charge of their
own lives.’
Arthur takes the good news to his arch-rival and his life
is duly spared, but gallant Gawain draws the short straw because
he has to marry the witch. Bracing himself for the grim challenge
of the wedding night, he’s happily gobsmacked when he
enters the bedroom to find the hag transformed into a lovely
woman.
‘Because you’ve been so good, you’ve given
me the strength to change my form,’ she explains. But
in the morning, after a fabulous night of love, she hands
him a new dilemma. ‘There’s just one hitch,’
she says. “I can be beautiful during the day or beautiful
by night. The rest of the time, my darling, I have to be loathsome.
Which option do you want?’
Gawain can’t decide. He’s just enjoyed the best
night ever and yet he wants to see her beauty in daylight
as well. And so he says, ‘Honey, you choose’ -
and with those magic words he enables her to be gorgeous day
and night.
The moral of the story is that when we honour and respect
other people’s choices, everyone benefits. Arthur keeps
his head, the witch sheds her ugliness and Gawain gets a lovely
bride – all neat and tidy.
Such tidiness eludes us in our own lives however. All of us
can surely remember key times when we have (or haven’t)
chosen well, thus kicking off consequences that have rattled
on for years.
Sometimes they’re big and obvious moments – as
in when you ask yourself, ‘Am I really going to marry
this guy?’ ‘Am I sure about leaving the country?’
‘Am I totally committed to this job?’
Other times, life doesn’t get directed in conscious
ways at all. Good fortune, bad luck, chance meetings and accidents
can slam-dunk our destinies, just like in the movie Sliding
Doors. If we’re honest, we’ll admit that mostly
we get carried along from day to day by stuff that happens
to us, rather than by events we are directing.
That’s why you can get tired of seminars where experts
urge you to do all that goal setting and ladder climbing.
It’s wiser, maybe, to accept that we just can’t
be in control 100 per cent of the time and there’ll
always be periods when other people’s wants must take
priority, as in when you’re caring for a new baby or
a sick loved one.
Duty and responsibility often stand in the way of our wants,
and that’s as true for men as it is for women.
But what we can do is try to be in charge of the moments that
matter.
You know when they’re upon you because they’re
gut-churning. It’s when you’re afraid or excited,
maybe goose-pimply, teetering in a situation which demands
that you make a big choice. Should I take out that huge loan
and buy that business? Should I grab this scary chance now
because it might never happen again?
Those seconds when you can be in charge of your life - which
was the gift Prince Gawain handed to his wife - have the power
to make all the rest of your years fulfilling and rich.
Next time you’re at a point when what you decide now
is going to set the scene for everything you do next, then
listen to both your head and your heart. Note: in the end,
you’re likely to go with your heart.
And even in considering the routine business of shopping,
be aware that the makers of every product are striving to
make emotional connections with you so that your wants will
be truly satisfied. Every day a thousand Prince Gawains in
the retail industry are saying, ‘Honey, you choose.’
So make the most of it. It may be just a loaf of bread or
a whole new life you’re deciding on, but remember, you
owe it to yourself to be in charge. That’s all we really,
really want.
Style magazine
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