I’m a marketing dot-connector with a focus on gender and a longterm view on coming trends. My mission these days is to make the whole idea of “marketing to women” obsolete - NOT to work myself out of a career, but to point out how it should be more about serving feminine brain traits in everybody than about figuring out how to better serve solely women.

In my view, over-eager brands can easily miss the point when they start to focus on women - in that their core customers are not simply either “men” or “women,” but a much more complex group of people with varying interests and passions. Learning more about how women buy or consider a particular purchase will provides clues for reaching everyone more effectively.

One more thing worth noting: as Generation Y and younger consumers become the market of most interest, marketers need to be realistic: gender roles and differences are not the hurdle they once were, so gendered approaches will need to be even more subtle in the coming years.

A little background:

In 2000, my then 10+ year career in marketing and public relations took a fascinating turn to the realm of the female consumer, specifically. At that point, I co-founded ReachWomen and began regularly writing for online publications. Within a few years, my business partner and I had a book contract for what became Don’t Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy - And How To Increase Your Share Of This Crucial Market, which published in 2004.

Since then, the feedback from readers has been wonderful and it has been a great honor to get glowing reviews from the likes of Harvard Business School (”[Don't Think Pink]” is rich in practical suggestions and interesting stories, with an easy-to-read style.”). In 2006, another of the book’s greatest fans, Soundview Executive Summaries, included an excerpt of DTP in their own compilation for Penguin, The Marketing Gurus.

As the book went to press in 2004, I made a major cross-country move, from Washington state to Vermont and launched the Learned On Women consultancy and the LOW blog. At that point, I had begun to zero in on the more traditionally male-dominated industries, like outdoor sports (a personal passion), consumer electronics, the radio industry, commercial development and jewelry (serves mainly women, yes - but still mostly run by men), to name a few.

These days I specialize in the harder-to-convince traditional industries and spend a significant amount of time writing the LOW blog. I also contribute to eBrandMarketing.com, HuffingtonPost.com and the MarketingProfs.com blog - Daily Fix, and write for, or am quoted in, offline publications such as Ad Map, The Advertiser, Fuel, the Los Angeles Times and more. My current favorite topics are: why “green” and cause marketing are so crucial to reaching today’s women and how to avoid going overboard with gender differences in marketing.

When I’m not writing, I’m speaking at industry conference or private corporate events. In recent years, I’ve presented to groups that include the Photo Marketing Association, the Gulf Marketing Review (Dubai) conference, the Pacific Coast Builders Conference, the American Gem Society, and Vera Bradley.

I’m a University of Michigan graduate who has lived in Washington, D.C., Portland, OR, and Bellingham, WA. I now reside in ever-lovely, often cold, Burlington, VT.

And yes - in case you were wondering - Learned is my real last name (pronounce it as you would the word that means “very wise”).