There are already sites that let you watch sporting events online, and you can do so for free. In fact, I regularly use one for watching NASCAR, F1, etc. Check out Channel Surfing.net, and you’ll see. I much prefer this to regular TV…

MarkyMark

For example, Cook’s Illustrated was 17% male readership 10 years ago, now it’s 50%! Food Network has made similar gains. Easily 50% of the shoppers in the supermarkets are men. Men by themselves I might add. Here in SoCal.

There is a lag. Consumer advertising and spending depends almost entirely on women, and that’s a thin reed, particularly given declining marriage rates, delayed marriage, and divorce.

Men, even if they are divorced, maintain their own households and form a significant portion of consumer spending. As marriage collapses, this only becomes more intense.

There’s lots of competition for women in the advertising world, but year-in-out, the only things that make money are sports, male-oriented TV channels (Discovery, History, Nat Geo) and big budget action-adventure movies. Which often also appeal to women, and young/old (aka “four quadrant”).

Disney, for example, is trying to appeal to boys, because their tween girl market is tapped out with the declining economy. The “New Girl Order” depended on an expanding economy, without baseline production of industrial goods and commodities, all that service stuff is just foam on the sea ready to blow away (as it did in Japan’s “Lost Decade.”)

Of course Disney is employing “the Kid Whisperer” … a clueless woman with La Raza ties who has no idea what boys like. Doomed to failure.

Culture is poised to undergo a massive shift, ala the Thirties with Radio, as the Internet allows content creators to provide streaming content, 24/7, aimed at a broad audience with “four quadrants” without extensive capital requirements for distribution on TV networks or movie studio rollouts for theatrical exhibition. The first movers can gain huge advantages in mindshare and preferences. Already MLB and the NFL are streaming games online for relatively modest payments, allowing people to watch what they want on their computers.

In tough times, corporations cannot afford to write off men as they did in flush times. You’re seeing this already in the Burger King online ad, with the unsubtle suggestion of sex. Every single consumer counts, it’s the difference between success and failure in a down economy for perhaps more than a decade, and no rescue from IPO’s, Venture Capitalists, Hedge Funds, Wall Street, or any other sources of capital other than earnings based on sales.

It’s pretty safe to say that Asus’s customers are nearly all male. Asus spends so little on marketing that they might as well not be spending anything on marketing. Instead Asus spends that money on engineering their products and relies on reputation to make sales.

What Asus proves is that advertising is all about getting women to buy crap. When men are your main customers, advertising tends to be minimal at best.

Marketing to Women

I’m currently working on a marketing project for a local gardening business and there is absolutely no question that women are the primary target market. This despite the fact that plenty of men garden as well.