Feminist Marketing: Can Advertising Eclipse Editorial?

We are all seeing the demise of editorial and the continued rise of advertorial. Journalism as a profession is shrinking and being replaced by opinion and public relations. Newspapers are dying off in droves in print and their online equivalents are streamlined to do without much more than a skeleton editorial crew. Magazines have undergone a similar process, but they have done without real editorial teams for years, even in their earlier print versions. What people are reading in the media now is dumbed down and written for SEO, as much as it is for anything else.

Feminist Marketing: Can Advertising Eclipse Editorial?

Feminists have been involved in marketing for decades at every level. The superficial state of affairs that we live in now, when it comes to social media, is being utilised by feminist activists to spread their message. Facebook and Twitter offer a platform for social activists to reach their followers and interact with them for greater impact. Campaigns can be run more effectively and cost efficiently. We have seen it in the political sphere with the first Obama election campaign. Rallies to promote hashtag awareness of violence against women by men have been organised through social media.

The digital structures that social media channels can create will only further more feminist marketing, both for political purposes and by business to promote consumer products. If social commentators and trend setters have tribes of followers linked to them via social media accounts, then these avenues will be utilised to promote issues and goods. Social marketing agencies are cottoning on to this fact already. Technology is providing platforms for change, and, also, driving change itself. Communication has become the biggest industry on the planet and most women would say that they are more naturally at home communicating than men are.

The urge to communicate seems to be hard wired into the female brain more deeply than in the male brain. As the proliferation of communication devices continues to spread into every part of our lives: mobile phones, at work, at home, in our cars, on watches, in eye glasses, and the number of digital screens increases exponentially women will network more and more. There is power in these social networks, power in numbers and the linkages between women all over the globe. Feminist marketing will drive social issues that affect all of us, both men and women. More products will be designed and marketed with women in mind. Male identity marketing will also come to the fore, in reaction to the feminisation of the world. Things are changing folks and the rate of change is only becoming more rapid every day.