So, for many Americans who use Facebook on a normal basis (50 minutes on average, per day) articles about the male Romper or ‘RompHim’ have surfaced in their feeds several times throughout the last couple of weeks. Despite the pros and heavy cons these articles report, the boys at ACED Design have received over a quarter-million dollars of support on their Kickstarter campaign. Be this a planned marketing strategy or not, we think that there are some things a brand can learn from this.

First a little history: The romper is one-piece combination of shorts and a shirt, initially developed to be worn by infants and younger children (wearing a diaper or similar undergarment), and designed to be lighter and looser-fitting than the more restrictive clothing worn by older children during the later 19th century. In some countries, they were intended only for boys).

While many the articles written in the last week were unbiased, those most shared around the social media were very much opposed. Coupled with the image memes depicting men having “romper situations”, and the ACED Design team decided to shut down their Kickstarter campaign due to the demand they received. From this you can see that (in most circumstances)

there is no such thing as bad publicity.

The more an idea is seen or shared, the more opportunities available to take advantage of the attention. A caveat that needs added is that it really depends on what you do with attention that determines whether you produce positive or negative result.

Male fragility has also come under fire, from both the reaction of men and women who prescribe to the ideals of masculinity and femininity, and those who scoff at the idea that advertisers “bro branding” to convince men to buy the product.

…but it has worked.

Not only with the RompHim, but within every industry, from daily care goods, to a brand like Harley Davidson, and to even Disney’s movies. These brands have primarily marketed towards a specific gender, still have control of the entire market, and sell to customers who both do and do not associate with that target group.

The ideas to glean from this for marketing purposes are that a

gendered product clarifies the personality, increases associations and preference; regardless of gender of the target group,

and

gendered marketing evokes more positive associations and support brands that are more preferred than gender-neutral brands.

One of the first and strongest held identities we form of ourselves is our gender, and so our implicit preferences skew in that direction. As the group/clan/community-centric creatures we have always been (and will likely always be), this will always be the case.

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-A

"The Gazette Times." Google News Archive Search. Google, 1 June 1912. Web. 24 May 2017. Lanigan, Róisín. "These Social Media Reactions to the Male Romper Are Hilarious, and Masculinity Is Hella Fragile." The Tab UK., 17 May 2017. Web. 24 May 2017. Fallon, Claire. "The RompHim Isn't Just Lame Wordplay, It's Male Fragility." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 18 May 2017. Web. 24 May 2017. May 6, 2016, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Facebook Time: 50 Minutes a Day. Lieven T. Grohmann B. Herrmann A. Landwehr J.R. Tilburg, van, M. (2014). The Effect of Brand Gender on Brand Equity. Psychology and Marketing, 31, 371–385 Kyle Stock (2014). Can Harley-Davidson Finally Woo Women, Businessweek Grohmann, B. (2009). Gender dimensions of brand personality. Journal of Marketing Research, 46, 105–119.