Yet Another Wonderful Example… Finance Continues to Miss the Mark With Women

Have you seen the new AXA Advisors ad?
If not, click here to view:

In it, a women is so preoccupied with concerns regarding her retirement and finances that she blows right past what would have proven to be her soulmate. Poor thing.  Then, thanks to the good people at AXA, she gets her finances sorted out, and can now live with prince charming happily ever after.  Oh, thank goodness it all worked out!  Thanks AXA! This is a perfect example of what we at DyMynd hear all the time:  “Finance does not understand women.”

First and foremost, none of us have ever seen the same message in a commercial directed at men, one where a man sorts out his finances and resultantly finds true love.  Perhaps there were some where he sorts out his finances and then a bevy of bikini-clad beauties popped-up for the inevitable night of hot sex.  But, certainly nothing playing the soulmate card. This is a clear attempt at pandering to what, at best, is a highly sexist view of what drives women.  Perhaps they believe this middle-aged woman, worried about her retirement, is still driven by the same forces as when she was six years old, playing pretty pretty princess and dreaming of her white wedding to prince charming.  If so, where’s the unicorn?  They must have forgotten. Where is the woman who is concerned about her current financial status, her emotional financial security, building wealth to support her family and the things in life that she values?

While we ridicule this less than sufficient attempt from AXA to woo women to their firm, it is worthy of note that this is one of only a very few financial commercials that put a woman in the limelight as the financial decision maker at all. Although, in this case, it is clearly only for her own finances.  It will take a whole other set of commercials before we can get comfortable with a woman managing a man’s finances, even though it happens in most families in the US and around the world.  Nonetheless, this commercial, sadly, still marks some degree of progress for the financial industry.  But, this only speaks to the sad state of affairs and just how poorly finance understands, treats, and satisfies its female clientele.

So, we women, and all the money we represent,  will have to continue to wait for even a commercial, the 30 seconds where a financial firm tries to put on its very best face, to show that finance has even begun to get us.