Why aren’t there any dedicated motoring magazines for women?

See the typical magazine titles if you don’t believe me; look at the colours, the cover cars and the headings… they’re SO obviously for men.

And yes I realise that most female magazines don’t carry much about motoring either which is surely another reason to think about this surely… They don’t include cars or other motoring matters for women, presumably because most of us prefer to read about beauty, health, celebrities, cooking and so on.

I also realise that it’s a gender thing. Traditional men are more likely to be petrolheads than us (with some notable exceptions, no offence intended) and they are more turned on by performance cars, gadgets and mechanical matters.

Whereas traditional women are more likely to look at practicalities like whether the car is fit for purpose, its safety and reliability record as well as how much it costs to buy and run, the onboard space and its environmental credentials. Then there’s the brand, looks, colour and accessories of course. This is a big homework job to do before you can be sure you’ve bought the right car. Remember that you immediately narrow your choices when you step into a new car showroom; good sales staff will do all they can to sell you a car they’ve got, not suggest one they don’t have but which might be better for you.

But the most important fact is that 80% of all consumer goods decisions involve women nowadays and we instigate some 60% of car sales and probably influence other ones our family and friends buy. AND we’re getting wealthier, more independent and definitely more discerning.

So if women want to buy cars AND it’s clearly a tough job to choose the right one let alone negotiate a fair deal AND most magazines are writing about cars from a male perspective AND ordinary women like me can write about cars and motoring matters without having to be racing drivers or Top Gear fashion accessories … what’s the real problem here Mr/Mrs Publisher?

Knowing the business case, wouldn’t a magazine or motoring section for women be supported by the likes of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) and likely to attract manufacturer advertising? Many car companies are using Mumsnet and similar hi-density female websites yet Mumsnet readers aren’t there to buy a new car, nor are they daft enough to say ‘A new Ford, what a good idea, I must buy one now.’

Surely females considering their next big item new or used car purchase would buy a Magazine that was dedicated to helping them choose a car that was right for them. A Magazine with down to earth reviews and feedback from females rather than macho technospeak? And couldn’t they be interested in other motoring matters too, such as how to negotiate the best deal, find a female friendly car dealership or measurably good garage and compare the best insurance deals for women. And perhaps this could include content about what to do with your car in terms of days out, leisure and travel activities?

If this exists already Mr/Mrs Publisher, please tell me and I’ll subscribe to it. If it doesn’t, I think you are missing a trick here and women drivers are the worse off for it.

FOXY Steph

After all, were we not taught segmentation as a very elementary marketing technique?

I mention this because, according to The Centre for Brand Analysis (TCBA), women are attracted by gender stereotypical brands such as cosmetics, fashion and household products.

As if this would be a surprise to anyone (other than so many men reading Good Housekeeping perhaps…)?

Apparently the most attractive brands to women are Braun, which achieved 24% more female than male votes in the Superbrands poll, Fisher-Price with 23% more votes and Bobbi Brown with 22% more.

Other female-oriented brands that show a high gender bias in the survey’s results are Good Housekeeping magazine (19% more female voters than male voters), pushchair manufacturer Silver Cross (18% more), crayon maker Crayola (17% more) and tissue brand Kleenex (16% more). Providers of luxury experiences, such as spa Champneys, resort chain Sandals and luxury products such as Royal Doulton, Swarovski and Whittard of Chelsea also demonstrate a clear female bias.

Marketing Week comments “Despite this, brands still have to work out how they can appeal to women and there is no single strategy for marketing to them.”

I’d suggest that’s because we are a more complex gender to market to because we go through more life cycle step changes than most. For example we are more likely to be shopping for children/older relatives or with their needs in mind, whatever our age.

And increasingly we are wealthier, more independent and more assertive when it comes to our shopping behaviour.

I’d be interested to know the research about motoring, for example. Certainly the UK motor industry is well overdue a female friendly business makeover although it’s a tough market to crack. Many businesses can’t even sign our straightforward FOXY Promise because they are being paid on a commission basis (so they can’t in all honesty promise they won’t sell customers services we don’t need…)

“I’d also add that imho women are the fussier shoppers so we can be harder to please! Businesses that are seen as female friendly are therefore going the extra mile for all shoppers, not just women. So to see a female friendly sign on the door is a good thing for men too.

FOXY Steph

Search for the good and female friendly UK garages near you.

Find out about a motoring association for women and enjoy female friendly services for a change.

I think this is an interesting debate for adults too. especially when it comes to marketing to women.

Why shouldn’t women be allowed to be women, to do what we want, rather than what society says or other women expect?

For example, if we aren’t mechanically minded women drivers, should we be expected to become so or could we not rely on professional mechanics in female friendly garages instead, to look after us and our cars when it comes to safe motoring.

Similarly, what right has any female to say that being a Mum isn’t a full time, rewarding and extremely hard job to do well. Or that a business career isn’t as worthy for that matter.

And in a motoring context again, are women drivers who can’t cope with a car jack (but have a breakdown policy to hand) any less foxy than a female motorist who is happy to change a wheel, check her tyres and top up her oil and water levels?  Good for her, of course, but perhaps she mightn’t spot signs of wear and tear that a garage professional would see immediately, in a female friendly business environment too rather than getting her hands dirty, all by herself?

Especially if car fitness checks were free, as they are for members of FOXY Lady Drivers Club?

I spent years competing with men to be seen as better than them. Where I succeeded it came at a price in terms of my home life and, with the benefit of hindsight, I am not sure it was worth it.

Why shouldn’t ‘girls be allowed to be girls’ and ‘women allowed to be women’ when all this means is giving us the choice between being like the boys (and men) or to be treated in a female friendly fashion; very often this is subject to the occasion.

One thing I have learned since setting up FOXY is that grown up girls can be very different from each other and most of us are poles apart from the boys when it comes to our shopping habits (and lots of other things too…).

Each to their own I say with lots of choices for all.

FOXY Steph

‘There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women’.

Madeleine Albright,  former US Secretary of State

Almost a quarter of women (24 per cent) are taking a more avid interest in political affairs thanks to foxy women in politics such as Sarah Brown and Samantha Cameron, according to research by motor insurer Sheilas’ Wheels.

Although I find this hard to believe (depending on the politician I suppose…) apparently one in six women (17 per cent) said they would consider dating or marrying a politician since the rise in popularity of the PWAG.

88 per cent of women questioned admit that the PWAG has had an influence on their behaviour and the way they conduct themselves, choosing modesty over brashness.  A further 72 per cent of the women surveyed claim the PWAG is a big influence on their wardrobe – way ahead of the WAG with 28 per cent of the vote.

Additionally, over a third (37 per cent) of British women would rather be, or be like, Samantha Cameron compared with a fifth (21 per cent) who voted for original WAG Victoria Beckham.

Testament to their growing fan base, Sarah Brown has 1,117,984 followers on Twitter.  Samantha Cameron has also set up her own YouTube channel, with her first film being viewed over 22,500 times to date(3).

Jacky Brown at  Sheilas’ Wheels comments:  “It seems that Samantha Cameron and Sarah Brown are really becoming the talk of the nation in the run up to the election this year and it is great to see that British women seem to be looking up to this new breed of empowering female role model.”

FOXY exclusive – we predict an increase in the sales of Converse trainers as worn by SamCam…

FOXY Steph

Visit FOXY Lady Drivers Club to find out about female friendly motoring services that women appreciate.

Women drivers buying a set of four Cooper high-performance or 4×4 tyres between now and May 15 will be entered into the free draw to win a full Royal Ascot hospitality package for four people including hotel accommodation and £50 worth of betting vouchers per person.

The winning group will be treated to a stay in the Royal Berkshire Hotel, grandstand and paddock access, a champagne and Pimms reception, lunch and afternoon tea.

Cooper Tire Europe managing director, Julian Baldwin, said, “Ladies Day at Ascot is one of the biggest dates in the society diary, so I’m sure our customers will be hoping not to fall at the first hurdle and be first past the finishing post.”

Every entry to the competition will also receive a free luxury picnic blanket to use on the day.

For more details of the competition, visit www.coopertyrespromotions.co.uk.

FOXY Steph

To find out about other special motoring offers with women drivers in mind visit FOXY Lady Drivers Club.

For example, if you wanted to talk to the decision maker in a B2B set up you’d do your research about the likely business function to find the buyer in, you’d find out who heads it up and decide how to contact them with your offer.

Why should it be different when it comes to B2C and ways to find the right consumer to talk to about their family spend? And your research would tell you that in so many cases, it’s the woman who makes the household, family, fashion, leisure and travel decisions; the woman who decides where to buy; the woman who is doing her shopping homework and buying more and more online; and the woman who networks naturally and influences her peers, friends and family on the basis of a favourable or uncomfortable buying experience.

So why not set out to talk to her above all, in industries like the UK motor industry with a reputation as one of the last male bastions and where women drivers often feel like second class citizens, no matter their wealth…

It’s just good business sense, surely?

Not always as easy to do as it seems of course when women can be as different as chalk and cheese when it comes to the many different stages in their consumer lives.  Chalk and cheese in terms of their needs and expectations, from novice driver days through motoring and community Mum-dom, to female executive company car drivers and then despite having lots of time and money to spend,  so many ‘older’ female consumers feel they are ignored…

And the solution is rarely to ‘colour it pink’ as that suggests a distinct lack of original thinking…

What women want is to know they are dealing with a female friendly business that

• respects them
• understands and addresses their needs
• actively welcomes them
• is honorable and ethical
• can be trusted to put their female and family welfare to the fore
• offers value for money (not necessarily cheap…)
• is well organised
• is easy to do business with…
• is a business they are proud to endorse and recommend

In short female friendly businesses are the ones that go the extra mile to win the female purse in contrast to other businesses that think men and women are the same and genuinely don’t know how to please their female customers without patronising them…

Which flies in the face of elementary segmentation practice in modern day Marketing methods…

Think of it this way….

Why wouldn’t women choose a female friendly business that offers the above rather than one that, quite simply, can’t be bothered to put females on the pedestal they deserve despite knowing that many women feel ill at ease in a male dominated industry like the UK motor industry?

And why don’t UK businesses try harder for women? Because we have yet to vote with our purse.

Which we will do as soon as we know we have a choice… and then businesses that haven’t understood how to do it for females will soon queue up to learn the basic rules…

FOXY Steph

Find out about FOXY Choice’s female friendly garages that have promised never to ‘overcharge, patronise or sell women services they don’t need or want’ when it comes to servicing or repairing their cars…

When it comes to women drivers we are to get out of our cars in a ‘ladylike’ fashion <yawn>. To be specific we are told to

Smooth down your skirt.

Keeping your knees together, swivel your body and swing your legs outwards.

Place one foot down, keeping your knees together.

Dip your head and shoulders forward and slide and glide out of the car…

Apparently a true gentleman knows that jokes about women drivers are cliched and is never a back seat driver.

I wonder who the book is for? Men or todays modern motoring Millies?

I fear that if it’s for female motorists, some may find this a tad patronising, especially if their sense of humour is wearing a bit thin at the time!

FOXY Steph

Find out about the female friendly FOXY Promise to never overcharge, patronise or sell women drivers services they neither need nor want.

• The most common faults were worn tyres, defective brakes and faulty exhaust pipes. It goes without saying that worn tyres and faulty brakes cause accidents and could lead to a motorist being held responsible for injuries caused to another.

• One in five drivers had known about the fault on their vehicle for more than six months but not bothered to do anything about it.

• One in three said they could not afford to fix the problem whereas one in 10 said they did not have time to get their car repaired, neither of which would be an excuse in law if they caused an accident and someone was injured or killed.

• Some 5% of vehicles in need of repair had broken or missing wing mirrors, while about the same number had broken head or tail lights.

Steph Savill of female friendly marketing service FOXY Choice suspects that some motorists have become complacent about their cars, imagining that if they are fairly new they are probably safe.

“Just as the recent vehicle recalls by so many manufacturers tell us, even nearly new cars can have serious safety issues and we mustn’t treat our cars like household appliances, doing little to take care of them and expecting to throw them away when they get old. Even those of us who are competent at checking our car’s tyres, oil and water levels can miss important safety concerns because we don’t have the professional eye to spot the unusual.”

Steph recommends that all motorists have their cars checked by garage professionals on a regular basis and explains that

“A dangerous car can cause a serious accident that could kill or seriously injure the driver, passengers, pedestrians and the occupants of other cars. Those who own a poorly maintained car may find that their insurer withdraws cover if it can be proven that the accident was caused because the car owner had neither carried out regular maintenance nor had it serviced often enough.”

Find out where the good and female friendly garages are in your area.

Find out how women drivers can save money on everyday motoring bills including garage charges.

FOXY Steph

Yet there has been very little in the trade press about this business move and, come to think about it, very little from Nationwide Autocentres’ about their business under normal circumstances, other than when they are pitching for industry awards of course…

Shouldn’t the garage and dealership industry want to know more about Halfords’ plans so they can compete with them more effectively? They are a national chain and many individual garages could be affected by their strategy. I posted a question about this very subject on a leading trade forum a week ago and nobody has responded yet.

It would be different if Halfords sold cars of course… aftersales and garage services are rarely top of the motor industry’s agenda despite a £9bn car servicing market.

Can’t help thinking of rabbits in headlights, frogs in hot water and ostriches practising familiar ‘head in sand’ antics…

Independent garages should be interested of course because Halfords seems to be offering several female friendly garage services that they are not. Like opening on Sundays and providing low cost fitting of bulbs and wipers so women drivers don’t get their hands dirty and/or have to pay over the odds for these routine but often tricky jobs. I speak as a convert here, having had an exploding windscreen wiper on a snowy Sunday motoring journey in Yorkshire recently when Halfords came to my rescue…

They should also be interested because Halfords admits to targeting the female purse and employing female mechanics, who are unlikely to be ATA qualified to begin with I’d imagine…

They should then be interested because Nationwide Autocentres do not, as yet, offer local car collection and/or courtesy car services so those independents that do, have a sales advantage that could work well if employed NOW.

And finally they should be interested because Halfords is planning to invest in posh reception facilities which [most??] old Nationwide Autocentre locations do not have now…so once again, female friendly independent garages with smart waiting areas, near shops and with car collection services and courtesy cars could steal a lead here if they got their act together NOW.

But the two main reasons why so many independent garages could lose out is because they are so complacent about their local female motorist business AND because few independent garages are genuinely computer literate and are failing to meet the demand for relevant information before women drivers choose who to give their business to.

Nationwide Autocentres are not unique in offering online bookings for MOTs and car servicing of course but they did take many years to introduce their system so it should be fairly robust. And whilst many female friendly FOXY Choice garages do offer online bookings, a significant percentage of small garages still don’t realise that a website is how women tell if they can trust them. Too many still can’t handle emails professionally, expecting customers to phone them and thinking they’ll have the same customers next year…

I wish them luck of course but they do not have a winning card to play in their hand…

From FOXY Choice’s female friendly point of view and on behalf of all women drivers too, we see most competition as good and healthy providing new garage initiatives raise standards for all and are not just attention grabbing headlines without genuinely sustainable quality substance.

I firmly believe that the garage industry must do more to raise awareness of quality standards so that male and female motorists alike understand how to stay safer on our roads by cherry picking businesses that clearly want to be better than others. They can demonstrate this by signing up to FOXY’s independent female friendly business Promise, by investing in regular technician training, by having the latest diagnostic equipment and by collecting informed and unbiased feedback about good garages, not just lacklustre testimonials that are often written to order…

FOXY Steph

“Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.”

Jesse Owens, Gold medal Olympian, 1913-1980

Why bother making the industry more female friendly I can hear you ask? That’s the easy part! Because on a global scale women control about $20 trillion in annual consumer spending, and that figure could climb as high as $28 trillion in the next five years. And even more impressive – women represent a growth market bigger than China and India combined – more than twice as big to be precise. So you need to be there in her mind to get your share.

To be more female friendly, first and foremost, the retail motor industry MUST employ more females in all areas and levels of the business. At present some 20% of the retail industry are females and I read recently that c10% of females are in management jobs (which was higher than I had imagined…).

That’s pathetic of course but knowing that you must employ more women, how do you address the perceived chasm that the industry is not a female friendly employer alongside the self-perpetuating machismo that drives service levels and communications towards men. An example of this is where manufacturers focus on the performance of cars rather than their usefulness and when aftersales staff use unnecessary jargon and cause the female fog factor; in my experience this is common when it comes to car engines…

Yes, to employ a female she should be the best candidate for the job (as opposed to the only gender prepared to do it for so little?) so not anyone will do. If it is a business’s first female employee they may have to rethink their recruitment and employment policy too as well as staff amenities.

In many ways small garages are easier to make female friendly, especially when the often family owned business includes the wife, Mum, daughter or partner who gets involved on a daily basis. She makes it female friendly at customer level because she knows what women want and fear most.

The tricky cultural issue is more often in dealerships where the Dealer Principal is more likely to be a man and supported by male managers in the aftersales and car sales business units. Even if they wanted to employ females, few can work out how to do this or where to recruit them without falling foul of the equal opportunities lobby. Nor do many women read automotive job vacancies because they perceive this to be an unfriendly business to work in. So the male recruitment level is self-perpetuating and fulfilling…

There is a massive job to be done to encourage employers to recruit women and women to realise that their feminine talents can be used to add serious value to the balance sheet in future.

I have written the word ‘talents’ above and I can almost hear some males sniggering at this whilst they imagine the sort of feminine talents that are first to their mind ie we are not talking brains here. Having visited smart dealership and less smart garage workshops I know that both environments are equally as likely to have topless calendars and posters on show. I find them extremely demeaning and imagine I am not alone here.  If that is the business culture that is allowed in the workplace, no wonder female staff and customers alike would feel ill at ease and may well sense being patronised or treated as sex objects when they go to buy a car or garage services.

So what’s to be done, assuming the UK market finally gets its act together before we all go online and cut out the middle men.

Why not have a look at a new female friendly approved scheme including consultancy services, training and accreditation at femalefriendlyapproved.com.

And to find out about a unique range of female friendly marketing services for UK garages and dealerships, there’s always FOXY Choice providing you can meet the FOXY Promise© in real life.

FOXY Steph