Ha, just last month I wrote an article about gender-based computer marketing, and how most marketing folks think it's a bad idea:

http://www.itworld.com/hardware/67071/laptop-gender-wars-what-your-netbook-or-toughbook-says-about-you

I was trying to grab a screen shot of this earlier to send to you. But then my machine blue-screened -- silly WoW driver incompatibilities! -- and I figured you'd get it from someone else anyway.

My favorite image on the front page of that site is the one at the bottom left, with the text "The hottest laptops that match your lifestyle". Check out the way they mix in racial stereotypes with their gender stereotypes.

This is the main reason I buy my computers in basic black. And not from Dell, either. Ugh.

"cherrydoll"?

At first I thought it was advertising a fiber pill, then exercise plans, then tampons. If not for the text I would have had to think what this might be selling.

Tee hee! I can't wait to use my girly laptop to shop online whilst eating yogurt.

Race seems pretty key, too--I'm not sure exactly how I would parse it, but it's unpleasant. Also, I notice that once again in the "friends who are all of different races [but one has to be white]" shot the blond white person is in the middle.

hahahaha... unbelieveable. interestingly, on the mens site, the computers are lined up in size order lol!! i think the blonde woman in the pic is saying "i've just got online with my new della, look at this pic!" *opens goatse pic*

You guys do realize that these companies spend millions on marketing and advertising with the goal of figuring out just how to appeal to specific demographics in the best way. So, you can sit there and pooh pooh the backwards naivete of the Dell ads, but chances are they're raking in way more money than if you were running the campaign.

I suspect that some deep-seated part of the readers here is, in fact, ashamed, that after focus group after focus group, this kind of campaign is, in fact, what women in the target market have been observed to respond to best.

Kind of funny, actually.

I think the whole concept of a "mini" notebook has more to do with portability, convenience and style than capability, and therefore this is a pretty good way to market it. The idea is that you can use your primary computer (or primary laptop) for work, but having a "mini" one that's easy to tote around and bust out at the cafe might just be rather more appealing than carrying a heavy, unwieldy regular-sized laptop around when you just want to check your email. And since a lot of people are capable of doing that sort of thing on their cellphones, the "prettiness" of the product adds a bit more appeal.

Besides, Apple has been capitalizing on the look of their products for years, why not give somebody else a shot?

@ Duran: See jfrah's link above about the weaknesses of gender-based marketing. Just b/c company pays tons for a marketing firm to figure out what advertising works, doesn't mean that advertising strategy isn't based on sexist stereotypes that insult a lot of potential buyers.

@ Cyn: But, Apple doesn't advertise specifically to men or women. And Dell is specifically marketing portable computers TO WOMEN (not to men).

Cyn, Apple has been marketing stylish but not "gender-specific" computer boxes.

After-market suppliers of Apple-compatible accessories have made "skins" for the Apple laptops for ages, and the "skins" have a wide range of colors and have gender-neutral selections.

Apple has typically highlighted the uses of the computer, rather than performance stats, partially because the stats were not particularly comparable with PC stats due to different architecture - benchmarks, such as "complicated photoshop manuever X on file Y", only get mentioned deep into the marketing.

Duran, for a lot of users, price and convenience are more important than stats, and for the rest of the users, all black-box PC ads look alike, and thus are unmemorable. The color-clad computers and "just folks" approach to marketing are likely to attract the casual users and make the standard users at least notice the brand, for good or bad. For most apps I use on a mini (12" screen), speed isn't terribly important - a lot of use is mere word processing, mini-spreadsheets, very simple calculations, and email. If the browser and the wifi work well, why get a muscle laptop (unless you do serious image processing or serious gaming on your laptop, which I'd rather do on the large-screen desktop machine).

I shouldn't even post on this one. I know I'm asking for it. But here goes...

I'm not a woman. And I'm certainly not speaking for "all women", but I know a few women who are close friends of mine who do consider a lap tops "style" and "weight" to be the most important aspect of it's design. I can totally see the need for this type of marketing.

Having said that, I work at a software company and know plenty of women who are 'geeks' as wendy puts it and are simply interested in tech specs. But I'm sure those women, like their tech - saavy male counter parts would simply head to dell.com to do their shopping. Is there anything about dell.com come that is specifically referencing the gender of it's intended audience? I don't find it to be any more "male" than the rest of the sort of cold tech sites out there. I guess I don't find them to be to "feminine" either but I can't say I have spent to much time thinking about the gender slant off the web site that I buy my hard drive from.

i don't think that there is anything wrong with dell using advertising tropes to sell it's hardware.

That isn't to say that I don't think that there is nothing wrong with those tropes, but I'll tell you right now I see my mom buying a laptop a lot faster from Della than I do from ibuypower.com

I almost universally despise marketing directly aimed at women. It tends to pander to stereotypes to which I don't really relate. Pastel colored laptops? No thank you. I'm not some delicate little flower who needs to be walked through learning how to use technology.

Don't even get me started on those Flat Earth ads. Ew.

"I suspect that some deep-seated part of the readers here is, in fact, ashamed, that after focus group after focus group, this kind of campaign is, in fact, what women in the target market have been observed to respond to best."

The fact that stereotypical gender roles are perpetuated by both men and women doesn't make us feel ashamed, it fascinates us. That is why we come here.

I like the typical brainy girl with brown hair and glasses. Wouldn't that be the demographic that wants to see the specs?

Miriam said, "I’m not some delicate little flower who needs to be walked through learning how to use technology," which only betrays the fact that she IS a "delicate little flower who needs to eradicate all evidence that any woman has ever enjoyed a pastel color anywhere."

Those damn pastel-color-enjoying women. They should be burned for being such a large demographic that advertisers actually (GASP) target them in their campaigns.

I will admit, I like the design choices. I just happen to like vibrant things. I admit to having a pink cell phone, a pink Zen Vision:M, and a pink Nintendo DS.

What I DON'T like is the assumption that this factor is the key factor in my decision-making when it comes to buying consumer electronics. Not only is it biased, it's also lazy. When they keep hammering in the fact that it's "pretty" and "small", they come off as too lazy to find ways to market the technical features in layperson's terms.

I don't mind if they do market the asthetic features, but I'd rather they did it as an afterthought.

What, no yogurt?

wendy said:"Just b/c company pays tons for a marketing firm to figure out what advertising works, doesn’t mean that advertising strategy isn’t based on sexist stereotypes that insult a lot of potential buyers."

But I doubt anything is going to change in that regard until the campaigns are determined to be ineffective in terms of helping the company achieve their sales goals. It might turn off some or even a lot of potential buyers, but are the number of buyers insulted by such a campaign offset by the number who are drawn to it? I'd guess that the process for determining whether to abandon an ad campaign is similar to how auto companies determine if a recall is in order: Are the number of probable lawsuits (or lost sales) about a defect (or ad campaign) going to cost more or less than a recall? If less, no recall. In a cost-benefit analysis of a marketing campaign like this it's all about the ratio of consumers feeling insulted vs. those buying the products.

Companies respond to their bottom line, not their conscience. Management personnel aren't even allowed to listen to their consciences (if they have 'em) since the mandate of a corporation is profit and growth, period. See how long a CEO who "does the right thing" at the expense of profit lasts, and I don't mean the all-too-common empty posturing that somehow passes as substantive action.

I'd like to share my experience with you as a simple data point. Please be aware that I am not claiming my experience to be universal in any sense.

I worked for a large media-savvy company a few years back, in an up-and-coming-young-protege position, so I got to see a lot of the top levels of management in action without having any effect on their decisions.

I was surprised by how little market analysis really happened, even for things like major advertising campaigns. I was appalled when I found out that this was a cost-cutting measure, because the charismatic CEO would throw out any market research he disagreed with. Since his grasp of our market was slippery at best, it was cheaper just not to do the research than to throw out the majority of it.

I strongly suspect that this is why we ran several rather offensive ad campaigns while I was there. Oddly, none of them were at all successful ...

Mania,
I'm not surprised by that at all. If you haven't read it already, I suggest reading Backlash by Susan Faludi. This is in line with what she wrote in regards to women's underwear campaigns. The focus groups and marketing research presented what women in general wanted and the companies (with the exception of Jockey) completely disregarded it. Instead of creating what women wanted, they created what they wanted and tried to manipulate women into buying it with news articles that lied about the "latest trends" and so on and it never worked.
I don't understand the stupidity in that or in any marketing strategies. If you appeal to the broadest audience (everyone) then you'll make the most money. If you fill their needs and create what they want, you'll make money. Why exclude people who will give you money for your product? Why purposely deny them products they want and sell products they don't want? It makes no sense!

Those who are missing the point here seem to be making a key mistake. They are operating under the belief that marketing is something companies do in order to respond to customer's needs. That is exactly what the marketers want you to think. Actually, marketing is something that companies do in order to create needs.

As an example, women never shaved their legs or underarms until Gillette launched a massive campaign to convince us all that women who don't shave are gross.

Women are concerned about "style" because lots of companies have invested lots of money to make sure they think they are supposed to. And now Dell is one more of those companies to add to the pool.

And saying that people should be "burned" because they participate in society is completely absurd. What the hell?

Sorry for doublepost, but I just wanted to add something. Alienware seems to be doing the same thing for men, probably mostly directed at teenage boys and men in their early twenties.

If you take a look at their website, they are clearly selling on style, but there is an interesting difference between Alienware and Della's marketing strategies. The style is marketed together with the idea that they are good computers. It's like they are saying "Check out how powerful this computer looks! A computer that looks this powerful must be awesome!" You have to really search on the Della site to even find any insinuation that they sell good computers.

It's also an interesting reflection of how companies market aesthetics to men and women.

It’s like they are saying “Check out how powerful this computer looks! A computer that looks this powerful must be awesome!”

Yeah, I've been sniffing around for a new laptop lately and I'm looking for one that's tough and fast but not pretty. Mostly the Dell website is like "hey, you say you want a fast computer? I'll bet you're a gamer!" and I'm like "um, no, I just want to d--" "NO YOU ARE A GAMER TEENAGE BOY now come look at the silvery colors!" "...but, I just want to know if th--" "IT HAS THE WORD XTREME IN THE NAME! Let's not look at specs let's play HALO 'CAUSE YOU'RE A GAMER!"

This, and the pink (and the overall shitty quality) is part of why I'm not buying Dell this time around. Yick. Just give me the goddamn specs please.

(That is to say, Dell is doing that too, a bit. I haven't looked at Alienware at all...)

Ok, I know the marketing is completely sexist, but now I really have to have one of those!!

Donna -- I don't think Dells are that great really; they're more like a cheap college kid laptop (that *hopefully* will survive until the kid graduates) than something you really want to invest in.

I cannot begin to count the number of times someone has said "Oh, I have a piece of crap (POS) Dell" when their computer comes up in conversation. Never had anyone say "POS Apple". Dell, to feed back your advice to Steve Jobs years ago, why don't you just sell off the assets and distribute the proceeds to the shareholders? Della, indeed. Jeez.

Is it me, or am I the only one who hasn't sat in a group of friends, laughing and smiling over what everyone else is looking at? I mean, me and my female friends don't do that. Actually, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one with a laptop...not Dell either.