Ad men clean up by targeting housework products at us males

Fear of being branded sexist has changed way marketing works

THERE is a general observation presumably attested to by sociological research — unless it is a foul sexist prejudice — that men are less interested in housework than women. If women do most of the housework — and I am prepared to accept that they may — this might simply be because some enjoy it more or live by standards of hygiene and order single men managed without until they entered into an enduring relationship.

Do I mind that the book I was reading last week is still on the floor beside the armchair in which I was reading it? No. It makes it all the easier for me to find it again if it stays where I left it.

Do I mind if the after dinner washing up waits until morning? Not at all.

As a young man living in a bedsit many years ago, I had eight dinner plates, so I could let them pile up and wash them all together once a week and still have a spare clean one for a guest.

But while the presumption thrives that men are less inclined to mop the floor, clean the bathroom or wash the dishes unless persuaded, I have noticed strong evidence against this.

Advertisers, who can usually be expected to know what their market is, are now pitching cleaning products primarily at men.

Who cleans the kitchen floor in a flash after a dog has walked over it with mucky paws? A man.

Routinely now, advertising represents the housework being done efficiently and at speed by a man who appreciates efficiency and speed.

The products are being sold as appealing to men and to their presumed stereotypical vision of themselves as technically astute, brisk and thorough.

You want a kitchen floor cleaned, then you give the job to someone who can manoeuvre round those table and chair legs like a footballer.

Not that there aren’t good women footballers; I’m not saying that.

The manufacturers of vacuum cleaners have also caught on to how to appeal to the male.

The current generation of stand up, multi-part vacuum cleaners are modelled on assault rifles. You can break them apart and restructure them for different tasks.

Unclick the main barrel, ram in, and with another satisfying click the tube that reaches into awkward corners and your muscle memory recalls summer days of childhood in the fields with your big plastic Johnny Seven gun.

You switch these new machines on with a trigger and you amplify the blast by pulling harder on that trigger, so you can imagine you are wading through a battlefield cutting down zombies or aliens while actually sucking up dust.

You get to play at soldiers, the stairs are cleaned, and everyone is happy. But what is really going on here? Are the advertisers really risking losing the female house cleaning market by representing their products as macho toys or are they on to something?

Have they perhaps noticed modern man is still caught somewhere in his evolution from preening gruffness towards sensitivity and practicality?

Have they worked out he is now doing more housework, but the side of him that would still rather be kicking a ball or playing video games needs to be placated? So, they make it a little fantasy role play for him.

Or could the truth be less of a credit to these advertisers? Might there be something more craven in their approach?

Might they have worked out that if they were to go on presenting the primary home cleaner as a woman — even if that is the near universal reality — they would be accused of sexism, perpetuating stereotypes.

They fear women would abandon their products if they were advertised as being specifically for them.

They would say: ‘Ha! Nothing has changed in this chauvinistic world’. The women are still expected to be domestic slaves and drudges.

My mother-in-law lives alone and keeps a clean and ordered home, proudly.

But the companies that might want to sell her a new vacuum cleaner offer her something that looks and feels as if it was designed to kill terrorists with.

This is not normally how marketing works.

Usually research finds the most likely buyers, identifies gender, ethnicity and other qualities, and designs a campaign appealing to that type of person. I want to buy a car.

They work out I fantasise, for some reason, about driving through winding mountain roads along the coast in the early hours of the morning, on my own. OK, they’ve got me.

And they feed that fantasy though they know I’ll buy that car and then use it to stuff the boot with garden waste for the recycle centre or to take my mother-in-law to the dentist.

And they show everyone how you can take out a crying baby in your car and lull it to sleep on a smooth drive around mountain roads by the coast, in the early hours of the morning of course.

This is how advertisers face the creative challenge of selling in a rapidly evolving culture, a society moving beyond sexism and chauvinism, but isn’t quite there yet.