Marketing to women: why Shakespeare was wrong

So many contemporary idioms are based on Shakespearean wisdom that it can be hard to avoid quoting his lines. One of the best known (and most often raked out for unimaginative newspaper headlines and blog titles) is from Romeo and Juliet, Act II Scene II, where one of the eponymous star-cross’d lovers asks, sighing on her balcony, “What’s in a name?”

But it seems Shakespeare might have got it wrong. As proved by the enduring presence of the Bard’s work in our thoughts and conversations, words and names can wield great clout. And the power of names is the topic of one of the reports in our forthcoming resource Consumer Culture in America, 1935-1965.

A female photographer in the 1950s

(Image courtesy of Deutsche Fotothek)

A 1956 report by Ernest Dichter’s Institute for Motivational Research for camera manufacturers Sawyer begins: “‘What’s in a name’ asked Shakespeare some four centuries ago, but that is because he did not have to introduce a new camera into a highly competitive market.” Naturally. Drawing on The Institute’s expertise in marketing psychology, the report goes on to discuss the new opportunities created by “the increasing penetration of women into regions of national life and social and recreational activity that were formerly the specific, exclusive preserves of men.” Though a fascinating social observation, Dichter and his colleagues saw this purely in terms of the large new market that it opened up. Companies like Sawyer would go on to tailor new leisure products and their marketing campaigns to women; in this case the Nomad camera.

Image © Hagley Museum and Library. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

The report considers the new market in terms of its “specific, feminine needs”. It asks the question: “how can Nomad advertising and promotion most effectively convince [the female consumer] that she will be provided with these satisfactions by Nomad exclusively?”

And so, as well as physical attributes like weight and colour, the name Nomad is analysed as a significant contributor to the success of the product. “Is there a widespread feeling among women that Nomad is an aggressive name?” the report asks, and “Does this appeal to their desire to take an aggressive role in the formerly exclusive male pastime?”

The Sawyer 1957 Nomad 127 

(Image courtesy of flickr Creative Commons user John Kratz)

Whatever The Institute's conclusions and their impact on Sawyer's products, the report makes it clear that in a rapidly changing society semantics are overlooked at your profit's peril. Perhaps in the brave new world of capitalism and the sea change occurring in the performance of gender roles, Shakespeare’s dismissal of the signifying power of names was less than astute. Perhaps that rose by any other name might well have smelt sweeter – it just needed the right marketing.

American Consumer Culture, 1935-1965 is available from August 2014 and contains over 3,000 reports by Ernest Dichter and The Institute of Motivational Research.