The 5th - Gender

Gender is one of the most widely used ways of targeting customers. It is sometimes very easy to distinguish which ads are for males and which are for females.
Males and females will respond differently to certain things:

Men make buying decisions based on partially digested information
Less patience with long copy
Less disposed to pictures
Look for clarity and simplicity
Fewer men’s lifestyle mags than women’s lifestyle mags
Men to be relatively obsessive and have narrowly defined hobbies – reflected in media choice
Men look for humour in ads
Men’s humour is cruder and likely to be more aggressive.

These above are the characteristics of men when it comes to buying and their behaviour towards adverts.
Schiebe and Condry (1984) examined advertisements according to product type and found major gender differences in the values promoted in advertisements. This shows that there is always major differences in the way in which advertisers promote their products. Look at the two adverts below, which is targeted at male and which at female? It will be very easy to distinguish. After seeing them, play both at the same time and you will see the difference!



This is how adverts differ with males and females:
For women:
ads often are more detailed. eg toiletry ads.
women appreciate very fine distinctions, such as 5 different variations of shampoo-for curly hair, straight hair, oily hair, dry hair, etc.
For men:
Toiletry ads focus on a single product.
Men are likely to pick up on one or two very salient and obvious kinds of cues. (Free)
Men think in a more macro way, and need to be shown the big picture.

From the two videos, it is easy to see that the Loreal advert, is for women. The above points show that women like very fine distinctions, and in the advert, Cheryl Cole says that, the shampoo is for 'limp, lifeless' hair. This goes with general marketing theory that women like the little things and the distinctions.
Men, on the other hand, like there to be more humor and need to be shown the bigger picture. In the advert, this is clearly shown and fits with the theory.
So I would say they are very good adverts for their own gender, if you showed the Loreal advert to a man, he would most likely just concentrate more on Cheryl Cole then the product. If you showed he Yorkie advert to a women, she would not like it and most probabbly try and sue you for showing the video to her!