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women, and to identify the blind spots that might be weakening your financial performance without anyone in the company realizing it. There is an unseen female culture in this world, and whether you’re a man or a woman, the job of this book is to help you identify it at one hundred paces, understand it, and leverage it for mutual success—yours and that of the women you serve. In a depressed economy where women are keeping an even tighter hold on their purse strings, understanding women should be job one, because no one can afford to guess.
    Women Are Females First and Consumers Second
    H ERE’S the rub: women are females first and consumers second. If you don’t find that surprising, then here’s what is—the lack of serious thought and attention that’s been given to gender differences in product development, sales, and marketing, when it could be argued that these are the differences that matter most. Knowing your audience as women must be accomplished before you can begin to understand them as consumers.
    Some people still need to be convinced that studying women is important, even though the knowledge that women are the world’s power shoppers is so intuitive and well supported by market data, society, sitcoms, husbands, magazines, and late-night comedians. An outsider from another planet could be forgiven for assuming that most businesses conduct themselves accordingly. It would be naturalto believe that executives are constantly engaged in the study of this “alpha consumer,” creating products that ergonomically fit women’s bodies, retail environments that appeal to female sensibilities, sales training programs that address women’s speaking styles and body language, and marketing campaigns rooted in female gender psychology. All with the goal of increasing stock price and market share. Right?
    Wrong.
    It’s human nature for people to assume that their own preferences are natural, normal, and “right” without realizing that these preferences may in fact be rooted in gender. Once you become aware of this, you’ll start noticing it a lot in your personal life, as I did a few weeks ago. My husband and I were over at another couple’s house for dinner when our friend suggested we watch a movie on cable—the violent, computer-enhanced film 300 . Our friend is a cultured guy who likes all kinds of movies, but this night, he wanted an action flick. When his wife and I protested because the violent scenes from the movie’s advertising campaign had turned us off, he said, “Come on, it was a big hit!” and then read aloud this summary of the movie from the popular website IMDb.com to convince us:
When the ambitious King Xerxes of Persia invades Greece with his huge army to extend his vast slave empire, the brave King Leonidas brings his personal bodyguard army composed of three hundred warriors to defend the passage of Thermopylae, the only way by land to reach Greece. Using courage and the great battle skill of his men, he defends Thermopylae until a treacherous Greek citizen tells King Xerxes a secret goat passage leading to the back of Leonidas’s army.… 3
    Goat passages? Was he kidding? We laughed out loud. We couldn’t believe he thought this description would persuade us to watch the movie. It is an understatement to say it had the opposite effect. In this instance, our friend’s masculine instincts about what was exciting did not match ours.
    Watch Your Blind Spot
    T HE point of this story isn’t that all women hate action movies or that all men love them, because it simply isn’t true. (I myself am a huge fan of the Bourne trilogy.) The point is that sometimes words and images that can be exciting for men can cause a negative reaction in women. This is a misunderstanding that can be harmful to businesses, and you see it repeatedly in advertising—especially automotive advertising. As an example, consider the print campaign for the Ford Flex SUV. It shows a car driving through the darkness