PLH Concepts

The core concepts that lie behind our products and services

Our products and services reflect the theories we outline in our book Inside Her Pretty Little Head.  Specifically, we use the following concepts when helping our clients enhance their appeal to women:

The Six Primary Gender Differences
The Male Achievement Impulse and the Female Utopian Impulse
The Inhibitors
The Four Feminine Codes
Brand Culture
Feminine Channel Planning
Feminine Creativity
The Feminine Organisation

1. The Primary Gender Differences

There is myriad evidence that men and women are very different.  The evidence we use is sourced from different academic areas:  Biological and specifically neuro-scientific investigation; Evolutionary Theory; Observed behaviour in children and adults.  Some differences can be described as inherent to gender difference and some are due to cultural influences and pressures.  Irrespective of the cause, the fact remains that men and women are very different.  We describe the key gender differences as follows:

Masculine	Feminine
Analytic, focused, linear, logical perspective	‘Whole-brained’ perspectives
Action	Feeling
Fight or flight	Tend and befriend
Innate interest in things	Innate interest in people
Survival through self-interest, hierarchy, power and competition	Survival through relationships, empathy and connections
Hard-wired to systemise	Hard-wired to empathise

2. The Male Achievement Impulse and The Female Utopian Impulse

The central difference in male and female motivation and the strategies they employ

The Male Achievement Impulse

Men survive through self-interest, hierarchy, power and competition.  For men, success equals the ability to outplay the competition, because it leads to a higher and therefore less assailable position in the hierarchy of other men.  The world viewed through masculine eyes is a huge, complex, action packed stadium in which he has to compete. The competitive context may vary – work, a social group, sexual conquest – but ultimately life is about finding ways to win. This gives men a powerful impulse (a hard-wired, largely inescapable, inherent instinct) to do better, and be better.  We have called this impulse the ‘Achievement Impulse’.
 
In order to fulfil this impulse to achieve, men have a number of different strategies that they employ in day-to-day life. These strategies are all designed to manage their place in the hierarchy, to put space between them and the next competitor, to assert dominance, and to demonstrate power.

The Masculine strategies in day-to-day life that evidence - and fulfil - the Achievement Impulse are as follows:

Status symbols to assert position

One-up- manship

Politics and playing the game

Focus on the headline not the detail

The creation of hierarchies

Focus on hard, rather than soft measures

From understanding what motivates men – the Achievement Impulse, and the strategies men employ, we extrapolate and use examples to establish two clear roles that successful masculine brands play:

Female Utopian Impulse

Where, as we’ve discussed, men are driven by the Achievement Impulse and by self-interest, hierarchy, power and competition, women, by contrast, are driven by the need to create a safe environment in which they, their offspring, and other people upon whom they depend, feel safe, secure and happy.

So the world viewed through feminine eyes is not a competitive but a collaborative one. The feminine capacity for empathy will not accommodate an ‘I win-you lose’ approach to life. If another person feels bad, the feminine response is to feel bad too, and then everyone loses.  The only way for the individual to win is for everyone to win.

The world is an environment that women feel impelled make safe, secure and harmonious in order that the people in it feel equally safe, secure and harmonious. We have named this objective ‘The Utopian Impulse’. ‘Utopian’ because its end is a vision of an improved version of the world: a world where other people feel safe supported and cared for.  Success is only achieved when everyone feels good.

Just as men have their own set of strategies for fulfilling The Achievement Impulse, women have a unique and different set of strategies in order to achieve their Utopian ends.

The feminine strategies that evidence and fulfil the Utopian Impulse are as follows:

Unlike men, however, women have the disadvantage of being less influential, less confident, less well understood, and as a result their world-view is less publicly accepted as important or even viable. As a consequence, it seems to use therefore that the role for feminine brands must be to inspire, encourage and support women as they try to create Utopia.

3. The Inhibitors

There are certain external factors that undermine or trip women up in their pursuit of Utopia.  The secondary status women have occupied historically, the secondary roles they frequently play in work, signals like the gender pay gap and lack of pay for many of their occupations – motherhood, caring for elderly relatives etc. - leaves many women feeling under confident, under supported and under valued.  From this we conclude that supportive, affirming and empathetic approaches are likely to have more appeal.

4. The Four Feminine Codes

These Codes reflect the strategies women adopt and live by, in order to create the Utopia described above.  Brands that support women in employing these strategies will connect powerfully because they will demonstrate an understanding of female motivations and because they mitigate the Inhibitors described above.

The Altruism Code

This Code reflects the female tendency to focus on the wellbeing of others rather than focus on their own individual success or achievement. It is borne out of the female ability to empathise - the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes - the female speciality act.

The Aesthetic Code

The Aesthetic Code reflects the female desire to make the world a more attractive place.  It is borne out of a belief that a more attractive environment is a safer, more harmonious and more pleasant place to be for everyone to be.

The Ordering Code

The Ordering Code reflects the female belief that order offsets risk, and creates harmony.  The tendency to take on responsibilities like the running of the home and family matters, meticulous and detailed planning of events evidence The Ordering Code.

The Connecting Code

The Connecting Code is concerned with the female need to build relationships and communities, the need to draw people together and find common ground between them.

5. Brand Culture

We have found Brand Culture a helpful concept in constructing female brands. ‘Culture’ reflects the kind of relationship women respond to.  Culture is about shared meanings and beliefs that bind people together.  It’s the connective tissue that links groups in a shared endeavour.  Brand Culture as a concept reflects the organic, expansive nature of the powerful female brand, in contrast with the reductionist, linear construct of the male brand.

6. Feminine Channel Planning

Our approach to channel planning is based on the way women think and feel.  We believe a ‘bottom up’ approach that infiltrates female communities and seeks to create an equal and reciprocal relationship with women will work more powerfully than a ‘top-down’ authoritative broadcast approach.

7. Feminine Creativity

Gender differences impacts on the types of creative ideas that women respond to most readily.  In particular we believe that ideas that demonstrate empathy rather than superiority, ideas that rely on identifying common ground rather than creating conceits, ideas that work on the basis of their depth and detail rather than a singular headline thought, will work much more effectively with a female audience.

8. The Feminine Organisation

The shape, attitudes and behaviour of an organisation can often be described as having gender.  Many organisations display inherently masculine characteristics.  These masculine characteristics can militate against the organisation’s ability to attract and get the most out of female employees, and can militate against the organisation’s ability to develop products and services that appeal to women.  By contrast, those that demonstrate feminine characteristics are often the ones that best serve the female audience.