Libby Copeland

Writer. Editor. Cultural Spelunker.

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Marketing

Articles on marketing.

Is your persimmon soap infused with geisha wisdom? The precious world of artisanal beauty.

Libby Copeland March 27, 2017

The brands may be small-scale and homespun, but artisanal beauty is fast becoming a big business, with more and more dedicated websites and retail outlets cropping up.

Categories: Marketing, Pop Culture, Washington Post Tags: artisanal beauty, credo beauty, NPD Group, persimmon soap

Our messed-up relationship with food has a long history. It started with butter.

Libby Copeland March 27, 2017

Butter’s story is a very American story, because the arc of its vilification and subsequent redemption is a parable for how we get food wrong time and again. We alternately demonize and idealize individual ingredients — not just butter but also sugar, caffeine, red wine and supposed miracle foods featured on “The Dr. Oz Show” — and in doing so, we miss the big picture.

Categories: Marketing, Pop Culture, Washington Post Tags: butter, carbohydrates, elaine khosrova, fat, nutritional science, obesity

Baby, You Can’t Drive My Car: Why does the auto industry get women so wrong?

Libby Copeland March 19, 2014

It was the soft gruntings of subjects’ reptilian brains, Rapaille says, that clued him in to the fact that women are obsessed with cup holders. Cup holders signify coffee, he says, and coffee signifies safety, and safety is what women want most in cars.

Categories: Gender, Marketing, Pop Culture, Slate Tags: auto, cars, clotaire rapaille, the female brain, women, women drivers

Is Diet Soda Girly? Marketing companies take on gender contamination, the idea that when women flock to a product, men flee

Libby Copeland August 13, 2013

Within the business world, this squeamishness has long been the problem that has no name; marketing executives and consultants I spoke with were well aware of the issue but didn’t have the vocabulary to talk about it. Avery had to borrow from anthropology to find the term ‘gender contamination,’ which traces back to the kind of ancient cultural taboos that banished menstruating women to special huts for fear they’d pollute everyone else.

Categories: Gender, Marketing, Pop Culture, Slate Tags: advertising, diet soda, soda

Why Women Should Buy Cars Online: How virtual negotiations reverse bias

Libby Copeland August 5, 2013

Given how unpleasant the car-shopping experience is for women, who find walking into a dealership to be like landing on an all-male, vaguely hostile planet, buying online is something tantamount to a feminist act.

Categories: Gender, Marketing, Slate Tags: auto, cars, shopping online, women

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