Stereotypes suck.

It’s hard to outrun labels. Women consumers face outdated gender-specific stereotypes. Shockingly, some myths about marketing to women come from the fairer sex.                                      

PixInk comes to the rescue with an excerpt of our upcoming white paper, “OS Eve.” Who or what is OS Eve? It represents a network, an operating system of women consumers flexing their economic muscle. OS Eve is the emerging economy to watch, and it’s time for advertisers to get with the program.

Before brands can reap the rewards of female shoppers’ buying power, they must discard age-old myths about marketing to women.  

Myth #1: OS Eve is not compatible with our product or service. Our brand is configured for OS Adam.

OS Eve is compatible with industries typically associated with OS Adam, such as sports, hardware and consumer electronics. Women consumers spurred 74% of NBA and NFL purchases according to Par Excellence Magazine. And female shoppers boost the male-oriented consumer electronics industry—driving 75% of all purchases.

Myth #2: OS Eve is not responding to our gender-specific marketing campaign.

Confirm that you have not programmed your brand using outdated gender-specific stereotypes. Eve-dom was atwitter over Dove’s Ultimate Go Sleeveless deodorant, which promises to rid women consumers of unattractive underarms. Satirist Stephen Colbert mocked the brand’s new attempt at marketing to women as “breakthrough shame-o-vation.” In fact, Dove’s campaign is rooted in 1920s-style advertising techniques, which ferret out insecurities in women’s motherboards and create products and services that appeal to them.

Listerine used the advertising technique to stoke women’s fears of not becoming Mrs. OS Adam. Libby Copeland recounted the Listerine ad in her Slate article, “The Cure for Your Fugly Armpits.":

“In one 1925 image, a woman reads another woman's wedding announcement with a troubled expression on her face. ‘Her case was really a pathetic one,’ the copy intones, describing the woman as nowhere near marriage ‘as her birthdays crept gradually toward that tragic thirty mark.’ The culprit? Halitosis, of course.”

What perils await brands that use outdated gender-specific stereotypes? Campaigns can fail to hit their targets. If women don’t care about getting married, or they are happy with their underarms, brands will suffer a misfire.

Myth #3: I don’t have room in my budget for marketing to women. Can I tweak my existing campaigns?

A market that controls over half of domestic GDP deserves more than a frilly makeover of male-oriented brands. “When a segment of the U.S. market is making 85 to 95 percent of the household spending decisions—including cars, boats, home remodeling, auto repairs, wealth management—if you don’t get their attention, and their business, someone else will,” states Stephanie Holland of She-conomy.com, a resource for marketing to women.

Sale by sale, women consumers are upgrading businesses from emerging to iconic brands. Their earning power is expected to reach $18 trillion by 2014, eclipsing the combined GDPs of China and India. Women consumers must be muses for brands. OS Eve is not a sub sect of your business. She is your business.

Get ready to harness the buying power of the world’s most influential consumer. Download PixInk’s latest white paper, “OS Eve,” today to supercharge your brand and captivate women consumers.