I Hate Pink!

Anytime a random product gets marketed for women, companies come up with the grossly unimaginative idea of making it pink. The latest example of that is Molson’s new pink beer, Animée.

But here’s the problem: women don’t like pink. Or at least they don’t like that the colour now means that anything pink means it’s for women, according to a new study by the Harvard Business Review.

Researchers were trying to evaluate how effective using gender cues such as the colour pink is in campaigns against women’s diseases, like breast and ovarian cancer. And though they initially thought they would be, they were very surprised.

When confronted with pink ads about breast cancer, women were significantly less likely to say that they’d contract the disease than those who saw an ad with gender-neutral colours. Incredulous, the researchers conducted more tests.

When subjects were presented with breast cancer banner ads on a website without prior knowledge that they would be there, 33 percent of them recalled the ads when the site was geared to women. When it was gender-neutral, 65 percent remembered, to the researchers’ surprise.

After three years of research, the results have come up similarly 10 times.

Why? The study explains that pink triggers a defense response of denial in us because that colour means feminine. So an ad very blatantly threatening women with a deadly disease through an abundance of pink ribbons brings fear closer–the mind then does all it can to push it away.

Maybe we need to be less heavy-handed. All the “Think Pink” talk is backfiring and causing women nightmares. If the marketing could hurt the cause, let’s change it.

Contact the author here: sedera@morningquickie.com