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Like a lot of people around the world,

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earlier this summer
my friends and I were obsessed

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with the Women's World Cup held in France.

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Here we are, watching
these incredible athletes,

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the goals were amazing,
the games were clean and engaging,

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and at the same time, outside the field,

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these women are talking about equal pay,

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and in the case of some countries,
any pay at all for their sport.

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So because we were mildly obsessed,
we wanted to watch the games live,

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and we decided that one of
the Spanish-speaking networks in the US

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was the best place for us to start.

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And it wasn't until a few games
into the tournament

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that a friend of mine
talks to me and says,

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"Why does it feel
like everything I'm seeing

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is commercials for makeup and
household cleaning products and diets?"

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It did feel a little bit too obvious,

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and I don't know if
we were sensitive about it

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or the fact that we were watching
with men and boys in our lives,

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but it did feel a little bit too obvious

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that we're being targeted for being women.

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And to be honest there's nothing
necessarily wrong with that.

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Someone sat down and looked
at the tournament and said,

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"Well, this thing is likely
to be seen by more women,

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these women are Hispanic
because they're watching in Spanish,

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and this is women content.

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Therefore, this is a great place
for me to place all these commercials

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that are female-centric
and maybe not other things."

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If I think about it as a marketer,

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I know that I absolutely
should not be annoyed about it,

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because this is what marketers
are tasked with doing.

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Marketers are tasked with building brands
with very limited budget,

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so there's a little bit of an incentive

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to categorize people in buckets

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so they can reach their target faster.

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So if you think about this,

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it's kind of like a shortcut.

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They're using gender as a shortcut
to get to their target consumer.

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The issue is that as logical
as that argument seems,

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gender as a shortcut
is actually not great.

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In this day and age,
if you still blindly use a gender view

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for your marketing activities,

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actually it's just plain bad business.

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I'm not talking even about the backlash
on stereotypes in advertising,

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which is a very real thing
that has to be addressed.

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I'm saying it's bad business because
you're leaving money on the table

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for your brands and your products.

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Because gender is such an easy thing
to find in the market

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and to target and to talk about,

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it actually distracts you
from the fun things

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that could be driving growth
from your brands

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and, at the same time,

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it continues to create
separation around genders

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and perpetuate stereotypes.

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So at the same time
this activity is bad for your business

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and bad for society, so double whammy.

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And gender is one of those things
like other demographics

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that have historically been
good marketing shortcuts.

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At some point, however,

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we forgot that at the core
we were targeting needs

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around cooking and cleaning
and personal care and driving and sports

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and we just made it all a bucket

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and we said, "Men and women
are different."

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We got used to it and
we never challenged it again,

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and it's fascinating to me,

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and by fascinating I mean
a little bit insane,

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that we still talk about this as a segment

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when it's most likely carryover bias.

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In fact, I don't come
to this conclusion lightly.

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We have enough data to suggest
that gender is not the best place

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to start for you to design
and target your brands.

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And I would even go one step further:

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unless you are working in
a very gender-specific product category,

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probably anything else

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you're hypothesizing
about your consumer right now

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is going to be more useful than gender.

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We did not set up to draw
this conclusion specifically.

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We found it.

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As consultants, our job
is to go with our clients

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and understand their business

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and try to help them find spaces
for their brands to grow.

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And it is our belief that if you want
to find disruptive growth in the market,

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you have to go to the consumer

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and take a very agnostic view
of the consumer.

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You have to go and look
at them from scratch,

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remove yourself from biases and segments
that you thought were important,

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just take a look to see
where the growth is.

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And we built ourselves
an algorithm precisely for that.

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So imagine that we have a person

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and we know a person is making a choice

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about a product or service,

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and from this person,
I can know their gender, of course,

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other demographics, where they live,
their income, other things.

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I know the context where
this person is making a decision,

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where they are, who they're with,

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the energy, anything,

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and I can also put
other things in the mix.

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I can know their attitudes,

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how they feel about the category,

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their behaviors.

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So if you imagine this kind of blob
of big data about a person --

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I'm going to oversimplify the science here

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but we basically built an algorithm
for statistical tournaments.

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So a statistical tournament
is like asking this big thing of data,

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"So, data, from everything
you know about consumers at this point,

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what is the most
useful thing I need to know

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that tells me more
about what consumers need?"

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So the tournament is going
to have winners and losers.

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The winners are those variables,
those dimensions,

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that actually teach you a lot
about your consumer,

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that if you know that,
you know what they need.

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And there's losing variables
that are just not that practical,

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and this matters because
in a world of limited resources,

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you don't want to waste it on people
that actually have the same needs.

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So why treat them differently?

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So at this point, I know,
suspense is not killing you,

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because I told you what the output is,

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but what we found over time

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is after 200 projects around the world --
this is covering 20 countries or more --

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in essence we ran about
a hundred thousand of these tournaments,

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and, no surprise, gender was very rarely
the most predictive thing

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to understand consumer needs.

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From a hundred thousand tournaments,

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gender only came out
as the winning variable

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in about five percent of them.

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This is true around the world, by the way.

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We did this in places
where traditional gender roles

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are a little more pronounced,

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and the conclusions were exactly the same.

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It was a little bit more important,
gender, than five percent,

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but not material.

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So let's let that sink in for a second.

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No matter how you're looking
at a consumer,

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most likely anything else is going
to be more interesting to you than gender.

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There's probably something very important
you need to know about them,

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and you're getting distracted because
you're doing everything based on gender.

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And that's why I say you're leaving
money on the table.

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Gender is easy. It's easy to design
advertising based on gender,

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it's easy to target people online
and on TV based on gender.

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But at the end, that's not where
the exciting growth will come from.

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If you're a food company, for example,
it's actually much more interesting to you

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to know where people are eating,
who they are eating with,

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are they very nutritionally oriented.

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All of those things are actually
significantly more powerful and useful

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than knowing if a person
is a man or a woman.

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And that matters, of course,

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because then if you're putting
your limited budget into action,

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then you're better off creating
solutions for different occasions

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than trying to target women
versus young men.

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Another example is alcoholic beverages.

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Thirty-five percent to 40 percent
of consumption in alcoholic beverages

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around the world
actually happens with women,

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but, you know, "women don't drink beer."

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Those are the things
that we typically hear.

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But actually, when a man and a woman are,
for the most part, in the same location,

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the emotional and functional needs
they have at that moment

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are very similar.

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There's only one exception, by the way,

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and the exceptions exist,

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where if you have a man and a woman

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on a date,

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the man is trying to impress the woman

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and the woman is trying
to connect with the man,

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so there's going to be
a little bit of tension,

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but that's important to know.

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We'll take a few dates.

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Financial institutions:
that's something where we've heard a lot

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about the difference
between men and women,

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but actually talking about
men and women as different

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is distracting you
from the thing that is underneath.

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We made it so simple
as "women don't like to invest,"

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"women hate managing their money,"

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"men are great and aggressive
and risk-takers,"

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but at the end it's not
about men and women.

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It is actually a different narrative.

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It is about, there are people
that are excited and energized

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and educated to manage their finances

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versus people that are not.

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So if you change the conversation

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from men and women
to actually what's underneath

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then probably you'll stop being
so condescending to women

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and you may start serving some men

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that are actually shy
about managing their finances.

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I'll leave one more example.

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If I go back to the women
that were playing sport at the beginning,

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one of the fascinating things we found
over different countries,

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exploring sportswear,

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that if a person is a competitive person

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and they are in the moment of action,

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the needs are not different
between a man and a woman.

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An athlete is an athlete.

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It doesn't matter for men and women,
it doesn't matter for old and young,

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you are an athlete,

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and in the moment of action
and extreme competition,

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you need this gear to work for you.

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So these soccer-playing women have
a lot in common with their counterparts.

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Out of the field, it doesn't matter.

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Out of the field, they may be
into fashion, into other things,

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but on the field,
the needs are not different.

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So these are just a few examples
on categories where we found

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that gender was not the best place to go,

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and actually the argument is

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that at this point
it's not even a feminist push,

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it's just we got used to it.

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We got used to using gender,

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and it's important for us
to start finding ways

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to measure other things about consumers

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so that we don't revert back to gender.

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I am not naïve,

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and I know there's still
going to be appetite

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and certain ease around using gender,

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but at least this warrants a conversation.

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In your business, you have to inquire,

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is this really the best lens
for me to grow.

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So, if you are, like me,
a person that is in business,

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that I am constantly worried
about what is my role

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in the broader societal discussions,

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if you're listening to your business
and you hear things like,

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"Oh, my target are women,
my target are men,

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this goes to young girls, young boys,"

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when it's that gender conversation,

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unless you are working, again,

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in a very specific,
gender-specific product category,

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take this as a warning sign,

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because if you keep
having these conversations,

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you will keep perpetuating
stereotypes of people

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and making people think
that men and women are different.

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But because this is business,
and we're running a business,

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and we want to grow it,

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at least kind of challenge
your own instinct to use gender,

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because statistics say that you're
probably not choosing the best variable

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to target your product or service.

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Growth is not easy at all.

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What makes you think
that growth is going to come

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from going into market
with such an outdated lens like gender?

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So let's stop doing what's easy
and go for what's right.

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At this point, it's not just
for your business, it's for society.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)