Sorry But Real men don't get pedicures
Posted on 03/29/2004 10:25:44 AM PST by qam1
John Galioto says he is no metrosexual. He did go to a Utah spa not long ago, but he was lured there by the prospect of hiking and rock climbing more than by the promise of massages and pedicures. Although he did indulge in a few massages when he was there, Galioto says he has not made the leap to lotions and facial peels. He is willing, though, to spend a few extra dollars on quality hair products.
"Just because I'm sensitive and get massages doesn't mean I'm a metrosexual," said Galioto, who took the spa trip last fall after leaving his job as a vice president at a consulting firm.
The lines are blurring between the men who work with their hands and the men who have their hands worked on. Galioto, who is 39 and lives in Manhattan, displays many of the traits that market researchers find more prevalent in men today.
Although women are often the focus of intense market research, men have rarely received such scrutiny of their buying habits, researchers say. Now businesses from brewers to cable television stations to skin-care companies are taking closer looks and are finding that the fashion-obsessed metrosexual man with a library of lotions is just part of the equation in men's consumer behavior. Today, men increasingly blend traditional macho attitudes with a heightened focus on their appearance, market researchers say. They are more in touch with their emotions but still want to be addressed as men. They are breaking new ground and need some direction.
Mary Meehan, executive vice president of Iconoculture, a trend tracking agency, said that those born after the mid-1960s were changing the definition of what it means to be a man. Men who came of age starting in the 1980s, after the feminist movement, have more opportunity to define themselves as they see fit, and their identities range across a broad spectrum, from the metrosexual to the beer-swilling football fan.
Many companies have been rethinking their approach to men. Even beer companies, long the standard-bearers of traditional male attitudes, have noticed something different in the brew. Miller Brewing said that its research found that men were not content with the bikini-babe frat-party image of much beer advertising.
"Men are tired of being depicted as Neanderthals, as if they have no mental capacity and can't make choices," said Tom Bick, senior brand manager for the Miller trademark.
Bick has found that men are more able to express their feelings, and are more willing to see women as people — not just party accessories.
As a result of his research, Miller has reworked its TV commercials, which focus on Miller's beer as an intelligent alternative to other beers and portray its drinkers as people who stand apart from the crowd.
That approach resonates with the market research done by Lowe & Partners Worldwide, an advertising agency. Joan Du-fresne, executive vice president for strategic services at Lowe, said that many men were moving away from a party-boy vision of maleness put out by magazines like Maxim and FHM.
But Dufresne also plays down the metrosexual vision of maleness at the opposite end of the spectrum. Men are more complicated than that, and more mature, she said.
Standing out from the crowd is important for young men, as is being self-assured and accountable, Dufresne said. Those qualities are displayed in an ad the firm did for Johnson & Johnson that shows a father with his infant son, having a more meaningful kind of guys' night than the one in a typical beer ad. Although metrosexuals are an important trend-setting group, some marketers say their impact has been limited to niche markets. The men's grooming market has remained stagnant over the last two years, according to Don Montouri, editor of Packaged Facts, a consumer market research firm.
Dieter Guillard, international marketing director at Nivea for Men, a division of Beiersdorf, that makes men's skin-care products, says men care more today about how they are perceived. He traces that in part to a service economy in which fewer men do physical labor. But, he said, Nivea has been careful to speak to men using a male language and images.
Nivea for Men's ad campaign tells men that because they work hard to stay fit, their skin should be fit, too.
Other companies with niche products have learned a similar lesson. Macho images and names can help sell products that are less than macho. Axe, a ruggedly named body spray from Unilever, became the market-leading men's body spray in just one year.
If approached with the right message, Guillard said, men are willing to take risks and try products that have long been associated with women. Spas, for example, are no longer a women-only venture. Some have incorporated traditionally male outdoor activities to try to draw more men.
Red Mountain Spa in St. George, Utah, opened 5 1/2 years ago with the goal of attracting a client base that was 40 percent men. Today that total is 35 percent, according to Deborah Evans, the spa's general manager. Red Mountain offers kayaking, snowshoeing, hiking, rock climbing, mountain biking and other outdoor activities. But it also offers things that some men find more challenging than any set of rapids: facials, pedicures and massages.
To her surprise, Evans found that men were not outdoing the women on the rock face, but on the massage table. Men, on average, had one to two more spa treatments during their stay than women did. She has even seen a growing interest in bachelor parties.
"Generation X and Y men have opened the door," Evans said. "They have given men permission to indulge in self-care and grooming without being considered feminine or gay."
Men also have their own television network, Spike TV, which started last summer after a round of research. Albie Hecht, president of Spike TV, a division of Viacom, said men's roles had changed drastically. Men are looking for more information about how to be the best fathers they can be, he said, and are finding that women are requiring more emotional honesty from them. And the growing presence of women in the workplace makes men want to be better dressed and groomed. In all of these areas, he said, men are looking for answers, but not without some entertainment.
Spike now offers such fare as a cartoon called Stripperella and reruns of Blind Date, Hecht said, but it plans to expand to documentaries and other programs that address some of the current male issues.
Even on a personal level, men can be increasingly curious. Galioto said that when he told his male friends about his trip to the Red Mountain Spa, he got a lot of puzzled looks. But, he said, once he explained about the hiking and rock climbing, many of those friends were much more interested. It wasn't the spa treatments, or even the activities, that really hooked them, Galioto said; it was the fact that the spa served beer.
"There are a lot of guys who are ready to embrace this stuff," Galioto said. "But we're not all the way there yet."
Sorry But Real men don't get pedicures
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social aspects that directly effects Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1982) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details.
True. It could also mean that you're a Barry Manilow fan...
(There are still plenty of those in NYC. My guy charges $8 and has copies of Maxim, Playboy and Guns & Ammo).
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