Man Up
A Q&A with Dr. Niusha Jones from Boise State University about how moments of failure drive consumers’ desire for masculine brands
When we are beaten down, we want to lash out. It usually isn’t physical or even visible. We might not even know we’re doing it. But, in fact, we often use brands to reassert our strength when coping with defeat.
In an article in the Journal of Marketing Research titled, “Success is Not Final; Failure is Not Fatal: How Failure Versus Success Messaging Leads to Preference for Masculine Brands,” Niusha Jones and her co-authors Blair Kidwell and Anne Hamby suggest that failure can make us more likely to purchase brands that are perceived as aggressive and masculine.
In this Q&A, we discuss her insights along with their relevance for marketers.
(This discussion has been edited for length and clarity.)
JF: One thing that fascinated me was your summary of other research about why we, as humans, resort to aggressive, hostile behavior. Why do we do that?
NJ: That isn’t just something we resort to as adults. Even kids do that. When they are nine months old and they are trying to do something and they feel they can’t do it, they might throw their toys or smack the table. It gives them a sense of competence, which is the inherent desire to exert an effect on one’s environment. When we cannot do that, we go primal; our first reaction is hostility. It’s not necessarily the reaction we show to the world as adults, but that is our first psychological reaction.
JF: In your research you use the terms “masculine” and “aggressive” somewhat synonymously. If I were dropped here from the moon without any cultural context, I might not understand that because they seem like two distinct concepts. Why do you treat those concepts synonymously?
NJ: I understand that the societal concept of masculinity can change over time, but from an evolutionary perspective and considering hormones, if you look at males and females, which one is bigger and stronger, which one is more likely to be able to exert some powerful physical strength over the environment? That is the male.
Given these attributes, other scholars who have come up with a definition for masculine brands in marketing have focused on traits such as aggressive, daring, and adventurous, while for feminine brands they have focused on traits such as caring, elegant, and empathetic.
Are all masculine brands aggressive? There is a spectrum. They can be more or less aggressive. And feminine brands are not necessarily super soft and caring. They can come toward the middle and take on traits like boldness and adventurousness.
JF: There was a study in which you tracked alcohol purchases in a county during college football season. What did you find?
NJ: That was in Ada County in Idaho, the Boise State area. We got data for liquor sales for the whole county and we found that every time the Boise State football team was losing, the sales of more masculine brands would go up and the sales of more feminine brands would come down.
JF: What are people trying to achieve in buying more masculine brands after their team loses?
NJ: A feeling of competence. It is a feeling that we have lost, so we need to resort to something that makes us feel better about ourselves and gives us a sense of competence. When we lose, we cannot necessarily do it again and try to get that feeling of winning. Football fans vicariously experience that failure, so they also vicariously experience that hostility and may think, “If I get something more masculine, that makes me feel stronger, more powerful, more competent.”
JF: It feels as if there should be a difference between, say, me doing a presentation that is a disaster, where I personally messed up, versus my team losing a football game. I didn’t play in the game. It’s not my fault they lost. But if I am a fan, do I unconsciously experience that loss in the same way?
NJ: I think it depends on how much of a football fan you are. People here really, deeply like this football team. They enjoy watching them and they care about them, so that emotionally affects them.
In other words, the effect of the team’s performance on fans’ consumption is influenced by fans’ emotional connection to the team. In this area, where we were focused, fans are deeply connected because of the prominence of the university.
JF: You also did a study tracking Amazon purchases, which was outside the context of football but which yielded similar results.
NJ: We created a pool of participants who had experienced recent failures and used Amazon very frequently. We asked them to upload screenshots of their last purchase before failure and their first purchase after failure.
The purchases after the failure were more masculine, even with things as subtle as the colors of the product becoming darker or the brand names becoming more masculine. Or they might buy something more utilitarian rather than pampering, for example.
JF: Did you measure whether this trend is equally pronounced in men and women?
NJ: This was interesting. The effect existed for both, but the depth of the effect was sometimes a little bit bigger for men. Research suggests that men are more agency-oriented and psychologically more sensitive to failures in the domains of jobs and sports. It doesn’t mean women don’t care. It’s just a slight difference. Women are more sensitive to failures in relationships. Again, it doesn’t mean men don’t care about relationships. It just means that women care a little bit more.
JF: What might this mean for a more feminine brand?
NJ: If feminine brands intend to use ads focusing on job failure, they might need to amp up the level of aggression associated with the brand. This could be as simple as the colors used in an ad or the music. You don’t need to change the brand name; you can just come off as a more aggressive feminine brand and use failure stories to promote your brand.
JF: What are some other implications for marketers that come out of this research?
NJ: This research is a part of a broader framework that I have been working on for a while, looking at the gender of brands and how that is related to consumption. In our framework, the gender identity of the consumer is not the only factor that explains why people buy a masculine or a feminine brand. It has been a dominant mindset for a long time — men buy masculine and women buy feminine, so if a man buys feminine or a woman buys masculine, there might be something going on with their genders. Our framework suggests that that is not necessarily the case. There could be other psychological motives in play.
So, if you are a marketer working with masculine or feminine brands, don’t literally focus on the gender of the consumer. Think bigger. Think about the symbolic value of your brands and other factors that could drive people towards your brand such as the effect of consumers’ desire for competence that can drive preferences for more masculine brands.
The other part of the story is that success doesn’t always make for the best ad. Sometimes it is more effective if you use failure. And it doesn’t have to be health care ads or charity ads.
Also, your product doesn’t necessarily have to be a remedy for the failure. A lot of times we have an ad that, for example, says if you are failing at losing weight, here is a product that will help you lose weight. But in our studies, a lot of times the nature of the failure has nothing to do with the product concept itself. Products such as coffee or a hiking tour obviously are not remedies to failures at work or sports. But in our brain, when we get to that psychological state of hostility and see that brand that symbolizes aggression, we want it. It may not be the solution, but it still works.
JF: Are you familiar with a campaign Nike did about eight or nine years ago called “Take on TJ”? It was aimed at high-school athletes going back to school in the fall. TJ was a fictitious character who never appeared on screen but was a metaphor for the other athlete in your school or playing for your rival who was always a little better than you.
The whole idea was that you are the underdog and you are trying to improve in order to beat this person. That feels right in line with your research.
NJ: I wish I had used that in the intro to this paper! That is definitely what it is. You have created this sense of not being good enough, competent enough, capable enough. And I have seen other papers that show that Nike comes off as masculine. So, a great brand and a beautiful setup for promoting the brand.
JF: I would think there are implications for programmatic advertising. If you are in Boise and you are reading a story about the Boise State football team losing a game and I am a masculine brand, I probably want to get my ad in front of you as you are reading that article.
NJ: Or if you are advertising a masculine brand within a movie, in which part of that movie do you want your ad to go? After the section of the movie where the main character had a failure in their job. The implications are vast. You just need to find those situations that will put people in the psychological state of hostility within their environment and that is where your ads should go.
James Forr is Head of Insights at Olson Zaltman
