Bigoted Bics

I meant to write about this as soon as I found it but I was in the middle of my dissertation and only seemed to find the time now. Bic, the biro company have introduced a new range of pens. For some reason they’ve decided that they are for women only, by calling them Bic For Her. When hunting for the reason as to why they are specifically for women, the only justification that seems to be available is “Designed to fit comfortably in a womans hand” [sic]. And also that they come in the available colours of pink and purple. Of course.

While this irks me a fair amount and seems rather unnecessary, the blatant sexism isn’t the sole reason I wanted to post about it. The reason is because if you were to hunt for some Bic For Hers on Amazon, this is the first review of the product you would find, recommended by over 2,000 people:

Not only that… There are hundreds! Written by men and women, squeezing out as much satire and sarcasm as is possible, with multiple comments of appreciation from others. They’ve attracted a great deal of attention with ‘jonny’ becoming somewhat a cult celebrity on Facebook at least. Here is another, a personal favourite of mine:

But is that really all Bic could come up with? I wonder what their marketing team is making of all the mocking. Assuming they have any idea… Although this is likely to be seen as poking fun, which really is all it is… We have to contemplate whether this is going to affect their brand image. Is all publicity good publicity? It certainly increases awareness, but not because it’s seen in a positive light. I would love to put this to the test with perhaps a Net Promoter Score or some similar analytics to work out the effect this might have had.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, lest we forget, Bic have been making disposable razors for him and for her, since 1975. Their creativity for new ranges clearly doesn’t stretch far since it’s easy to see where they got their inspiration from. It is a very obvious marketing ploy, but of course it’s nothing new. The Daily Muse also comments on Bic and gives a great countdown of some other products painted pink that presumably therefore instantly attract the fairer sex. In the meanwhile, at least Amazon reviews have given us an amusing outlet to make fun of such nonsense, even if that’s not quite what the functionality was designed for.