Meeting Harry Styles and what it taught me about "gender contamination" in business

Why men (are said) to prefer products untouched by women

It was Harry Styles’ birthday this week, which is why I am going to tell you about the time I met him, and what it taught me about a phenomenon called “gender contamination” in business.    

This is what happened:

It was a few years ago at the press junket for Dunkirk. Now press junkets for big films like Dunkirk are rather strange affairs. In this case the studio sent my group of European journalists to view the film at the gigantic London Imax at seven o clock in the morning. And believe me, watching a WAR FILM at an IMAX first thing in the morning is INTENSE…

Then they drove us off to one of the fancier London hotels.

At a press junket you are normally put in a hotel room where you sit with a few other journalists and wait for the different cast members and the director to come in for their individual interviews.

The room was a bit chilly and most of the female journalists started putting cardigans and coats on. If you are familiar with the work of Caroline Criado Perez (which you all should be) you know that air conditioning temperature is often set based on a formula developed around the metabolic resting rate of the average forty-year old man. This is usually too cold for the average woman.

Then Harry Styles came in.

He looked around the room and IMMEDIATELY noticed that the women looked cold and IMMEDIATELY asked if he could turn the heating up. He even got up and tried to do it himself (unsuccessfully). He was the only man that day who noticed.

I would argue that this little incident tells you A LOT about the commercial success of Harry Styles.

Why?

If it’s not too painful - let me take you back to the time when One Direction broke up. Some other members of the band (no names!) did everything they could to distance themselves from their boy band roots.

Not Styles.

When Rolling Stone asked him if he felt pressure to prove himself as a “serious musician” with “an older crowd”. He said:

 “Who’s to say that young girls who like pop music— have worse musical taste than a 30-year-old hipster guy?”

Then he pointed out (correctly) that The Beatles became successful thanks to hords of screaming teenage girls.

“You gonna tell me they are not serious?”

And this is the key: Harry Styles has made a career of not looking down on female preferences or things perceived as female. You might say: well who does that? Who looks down on things just because women and girls like it?

A LOT of people.

There is even a name for it. It is called “gender contamination”.

Research from Harvard Business School shows that loyal customers often get upset when a brand associated with men expands to include products perceived as feminine. Coca Cola couldn’t get American men to drink Diet Coke because women liked it. In the end they launched Coke Zero - in a (manly) black tin…

There’s a paper by Jill Avery that looks into the reactions when Porsche launched Porsche Cayenne, it was a SUV and therefore by many perceived as a car “for mums”. Would this “catering to female consumers” contaminate the whole Porsche brand?

It is not surprising that these sentiments exist. When people call my youngest daughter a “tomboy” it’s a compliment. Hell, it’s basically a promotion! Congratulations you are almost a boy!

It’s the things we perceive as “feminine” that we look down upon.

But Harry Styles has always wanted us to know that he doesn’t. He is the first man to pose solo on the cover of American Vogue.

And he did it wearing a dress.

Is there a more OBVIOUS way to say: “Hey, I am a man who does not fear my brand being “contaminated” with things perceived as feminine?!”

And when it comes to business and consumption he is right: the bigger story is how things first liked by women and girls have taken over the world. Everything from The Beatles to Star Trek (women created the first Star Trek fandom). And as you probably know Porsche ended up selling a lot of those Cayennes…

Women influence 80 percent of all consumer decisions in the economy. It’s frankly irrational to pay as little attention as we do to their preferences - whether that’s for warmer rooms or pop stars from Cheshire with great hair.

Happy Thursday!

NOTES:

Caroline Criado Perez’s book Invisible Women

Bridget Brennan’s book Why She Buys on women as consumers

A paper on Gender Contamination in Indian Automobile Advertisements