Leo Burnett division Leo She recently conducted a study of 1,000 North American women to uncover how their attitudes towards their homes might be used as insight towards more effective brand communications. Methodology included online panels and ‘friendship group’ interviews conducted in their homes to keep the honesty factor up, augmented by pop culture audits of homes to suss out media habits. Universal truths revealed included ‘clutter is the new fat’ and that more women are associating their home with stressful rather than joyful emotions. As more women take on more roles outside the home (while men aren’t taking on more roles inside the home) a few related psychographic segments have been identified, and downshifting, outsourcing and hiving are among the resultant trends.
One of the home types identified which accounts for 29% of women is described as ‘Treading Water.’ They want to keep a nice house but feel overwhelmed by the workload, and are therefore looking for easy-fix products, consume fast-solution type media and respond to ads that stress simplicity. Another group (22% of women) dubbed ‘Keep It Simple’ are more focused on quality of life and relationships than the perfect house, and would be a Real Simple mag reader. Ads that emphasize ease, quality and how the product will enhance their life should click with this type. The ‘House Proud’ set (37%), are achieving their idealistic home standards and tend to read Better Homes, Creative Home and Living, and respond to ads that give details, as she likes to be a maven. The final 12% fall into a sad ‘Keeping Up With the Joneses’ group that strive for perfection to impress others more than for personal satisfaction, and are therefore grumpily obsessed about it. They tend to read House Beautiful, and are less creative than the House Proud set so respond to adverts that speak with authority and make guarantees.
Another trend noted was the elevation of the ordinary, as great style comes to everyday products, and how some marketers are responding to the stressed-out home-CEOs – such as a grocery store in Sweden arranged in a snail pattern, starting with everything you need for breakfast and ending with the dinner items.
Check out http://www.leoburnett.ca to take the quiz and see where you fall.
