Today, there is a lot of enthusiasm and encouragement for IP
owners and managers to evolve or reinvent their IP to be more dual gender.
Because our Meta-Story work cuts across such a
varied cross section of both entertainment and product that is male, female,
dual gender, older and younger, I have five important insights to share for
those pondering what to do about the question of embracing dual gender for IP
or brand.
Making the dual
gender decision is not an automatic multiplier to your success. It can have a
very positive effect, but it can also dilute or, in some cases, even reduce the
brand and franchise adoption you are seeking from either or both genders.
Here are 5 key factors that anyone creating, managing or
owning a brand or entertainment IP that is considering whether or not to lean
into dual gender stories should know.
1.
There’s
a big difference between ratings/box office and property usage/play patterns
I’ve recently read a number of articles suggesting that the
IP and brands that will be the big winners in the near future will be dual
gender. I think that there is some truth to that statement if the success you
are seeking is box office, VOD downloads or TV ratings. It’s simple math. If
your content is interesting to a broader audience then you have a better chance
at bigger numbers.
Though this common sense rule is generally true, as the
audience leaves preschool age and heads for their tweens, teens and young
adulthood, robust dual gender becomes a lot trickier to achieve and may not be
what your brand business is all about.
Additionally, what your audience/consumer shows up to watch
does not necessarily translate into what they find relevant and useful in their
lives on a daily basis and that is what drives commercial adoption and deeper loyalty.
As an example, we are seeing a strong trend across
industries where the 6 and up boys are exiting or significantly reducing their
usage of brands that had previously had strong 6 and up boy loyalty. What we’ve found is that for male play and
socialization, boys of this age need and hunt strongly male content (see point
#5).
Several factors are contributing to why these boys are
feeling that these brands no longer represent what they want and need at the
point they are in their growth and lives. Underlying changes to the structure
of the IP and entertainment that can happen when becoming more dual gender can
be a significant contributor to that messaging. It is interesting to note that
as reported in several recent articles, more of the work of becoming dual
gender is happening in boy’s properties for a number of reasons. To be clear, there is a big, big
difference between being gender inclusive/respectful vs homogenous (see point
#3)
2.
The
“Gender Structure” of your story is more important than the gender of your
characters
It can be easy to think of creating dual gender success
almost like it’s a spreadsheet with character gender boxes to check. If the
gender balance sheet looks good then you’re on the right track to win with both
boys and girls! Well...
Boys and Girls, Men and Women, instinctually move and
resonate with the structure and themes of the story somewhat independent
of the gender of the characters. Boys and men showed up in droves to see the
new Mad Max movie with Charlize Theron solidly in the main protagonist role.
There are male structured stories, female structured stories
and dual structure stories. Being aware of what you are making and carefully
tuning it to deliver the results you are looking for is critical to
post-entertainment adoption and retention of the audience and brand themes you
want.
Well done stories of any structure can often get both genders to consume the entertainment. though it seems clear from both data and anecdotal evidence that girls are more likely to consume boy content than boys consuming girl content. This is largely because to tell a good human story you have to include social/emotional moves. In action stories this can give girls what they need as well as the action and excitement they want to be included in. To tell a good social emotional story you don't have to include the action and heroic elements and structures boys want and need.
Net/net, there are distinctly different power structures that each gender needs.
The most direct way to explain the difference in the narrative
gender power structures is with these two simple statements:
Female Power: I
am more powerful when my tribe is more powerful!
Male Power: My
tribe is more powerful when I am more powerful!
For the female structured heroic narrative the female hero
is at the center of the tribe delivering on a key female imperative: healing
the tribe’s dysfunction. There can be a little or a lot action involved (and
girls today don’t want limits on their action and adventure) but fundamentally
the resolve is driving towards healing the tribe.
For a male structured heroic narrative, the male hero stands
outside the tribe to defend against all threats. He has emotional stakes in the
tribe but the resolve is about defeating that threat, not primarily healing the
tribe.
Meeting that threat often involves a unique kind of
sacrifice known as “the hero’s choice.” Batman sacrifices his “normal” life in
order to function as Batman. As a contrast, Disney’s Big Hero 6 is a good
example of great male and female heroic roles in the story and a resolve that
doesn’t impose a classic hero’s choice on the male hero. This story is dual
gender with a more female structured resolve as he heals the tribe and as a
team they vanquish the threat.
There’s a whole lot of other structure and narrative considerations
that cascade from those two simple differences that I won’t dive into here.
What’s interesting is if you think of those structures as
dials. Both can be at 10 or one at 0 and one at 10 and everything in between. It
is being aware of how you are setting those dials that has everything to do
with the commercial viability of your IP with both or either gender!
This is a key part of the reason why Video games seem to be
gobbling up the guys at a younger and younger age. Yes, the play is very immersive.
Yes, the worlds and action are seriously cool, but what may be the most
important truth about video games and guys is that the structure of the “you-drive-it”
narratives is overwhelmingly a male heroic resolve. Video games are the
strongest “house of guy” on the planet right now and boys/guys instinctually
join the tribe to find what they need for gender identity growth and rite-of-passage
guy-community. (Let’s not roll the gender depiction issues for video games into
this conversation. I recognize its importance but we’re focusing on illustrating
narrative structure.)
3.
Inclusive
vs homogenous
What’s really important in any story (brand or
entertainment) is giving each gender what they need culturally, emotionally and
developmentally.
It’s also important not to have characters inserted into
stories or brands simply to deflect criticism.
I greatly prefer using the phrase “gender inclusive” versus dual gender or gender neutral because it
describes, what I believe, is the strongest approach right in the title.
a. Understand
what the business of your IP is (ratings/box office and/or boys, girls or dual
gender commercial franchise)
b. Structure
the story to fulfill its intended role with the right empowerment and resolves.
c. Include both genders in the story (not
necessarily equal in numbers)
d. Write
each gender respectful of what they need within the context of your story and
especially targeting the core commercial opportunity you have defined.
Within brands, it is also possible to have a single brand
develop robust but separate offerings for each gender. Here too it is not about
just turning up the pink or blue dial on the product. It is about delivering
what each gender needs and wants at the life and cultural stage they are at.
Nerf is a great example of this kind success. The brand is
inclusive of guys and girls but has distinct segments that are well tuned to
each.
4.
Age
is a big factor
Dual gender is much easier to achieve for preschoolers
because prior to around 5 years old, boys and girls are in the business of
building basic understandings of their world and making their first forays into
non-ego-centric thinking. Though they are aware of being a boy or a girl and are
beginning to absorb the cultural and familial gender examples, they haven’t yet
moved into the ages of growing and exercising gender-based power.
Once past 5 or 6 years old, peer opinion becomes
increasingly important. In fact, past preschool, one could say amongst peer opinion, same
gender opinion ranks supreme.
The older a child becomes, the more they naturally tend to
spend more time in single gender tribes to define what it means to be a guy or
a girl by exploring and growing into life’s challenges in full collaboration
with their chosen gender peers. We do this because, like most mammals, we have
an inborn and important gender role to discover and contribute to the world and
to our species.
Net/net, family culture starts the gender journey but
community, gender tribes and mass culture take over defining what it means to
“fit” into a gender.
5.
Boys
and Girls have different needs
To talk about the differing needs of guys and girls we need
to unbox what it means to live in The House of girl vs The House of guy, and
why those two houses are important no matter what time in history we are living
within.
In order to avoid accidental and kid-confusing gender
engineering, we must understand the difference between cultural influences (that
should be questioned and sometimes challenged), versus the natural and
important developmental and community needs that can be different for boys and
girls.
The house of Girl or the House of Guy, are a shorthand way
of describing the big buckets of ideas, norms, cultural influences, outward
messaging and inward journeys that each gender seeks to belong to as they
seriously engage in their own journey into adulthood. This is definitely one of
those concepts that boys and girls instinctively “know it when they see it,”
and just as clearly, know when something does not have that gender identity
nourishment and support built into it.
Brands such as American Girl have grown to amazing strength
by living clearly in the house of girl and attaching a vision and higher
purpose to it. These two houses often resonate with connection to girlness or
guyness that cuts across generations, evolving as it progresses but including
the best of gender goodness from the unbroken gender past.
Understanding these needs and these houses helps us to see
that there are big differences between gender neutral, dual gender and gender
inclusive.
It also helps us to filter decisions and ideas about gender
positioning and to understand that there are some concepts that cannot be made
commercially dual gender (vs gender inclusive) without losing a significant part of their commercial
strength and the reasons why the audience loves it and wants to use it in their
lives.
As we continue the important work of continual cultural
evolution in our storytelling and brand management it helps to avoid seeing the
discussion about gender balance in IP and brands as a single, simple statement
that “the winners of the future will be dual gender.” History, biology,
commerce and the kids themselves are telling us something more nuanced and
powerful. Instead, I like to think that
getting good at being gender inclusive, whether I have a boy’s brand a girl’s
brand or a true dual gender brand, is a great way to do right by both genders
and do right by your business at the same time.
