In this discussion, the speakers examine how missteps in gender-focused marketing have historically limited product success and shaped consumer behavior. They cite the case of Viagra and Cialis, originally designed as vasodilators that benefited women more than men, but marketed in a way that led women to purchase them for their partners, creating a lasting stigma and halving the potential market. The conversation then shifts to historical examples: the tobacco industry’s deliberate campaign to recruit women smokers by framing cigarettes as symbols of liberty during the suffrage era, which doubled their market share, and razor manufacturers’ strategy of portraying female leg hair as unclean, prompting a rapid cultural shift toward daily shaving. Throughout, the speakers reflect on these lessons as they consider positioning a new platform technology, emphasizing the importance of understanding past marketing failures to avoid repeating them.
Chapters
Bulletproof radio, a state of high performance. If you want to be honest for a minute, I can't make any claims, but we have had a lot of conversation about if this happens. Do we talk about it, do we market it? I mean, when we were talking with our. One of our chief scientists, Dr. Kenneth Ferguson, who led the team for Cialis, they said that Viagra and Cialis made a massive mistake. They no longer really sell to women, and it was built for women. It's a vasodilator. It helps women more than men. The problem was when they started to market it, women bought it but for their man. And so women had a stigma against using it. Still do to this day. And so Viagra and Cialis, though they were home runs, cut off half their market when they launched. Because of the way they launched, they could have been twice as successful. So that is something we're being very interested in. I don't want this to be a one off. This is some platform technology here.
Well, one of the things that I study in my copious spare time is the history of consumer packaged goods marketing. And it is some of the most amazing and sometimes really dark history of, like, how companies behave. I mean, it is so cool when you really get right down to it. But one of the things that happened is that men smoked and women didn't. So the smoking industry hired. This is so bad. They hired basically propagandists who did, like, national propaganda, I believe it. And it was actually a relative of Sigmund Freud who did this stuff. And they said, here's what to do. Because the women's suffrage movement was happening at the time. They got about a dozen ladies to march smoking, and they branded cigarettes as liberty torches. And you smoked to show your power as a woman. And they doubled their market size. And within a couple years, something like 60% of women had started smoking. And then the razor companies, hmm, we're selling razors to men. Our market's half as big as it should be. So what are we gonna do? We're gonna tell women that, oh, it's dirty to have hairy legs. And within two years, every woman shaved their legs. And they're like, ha, ha, look at all the razors we're selling. And they manip crap out of us to do it.
