It is now well documented and widely accepted that narrow cultural definitions of masculinity can make men feel like failures if they express feelings, surface vulnerabilities, and share their emotional pain or indeed their joy. As a result, men tend to keep things to themselves.

Therapists the world over attempt to unpick the ‘boys don’t cry’ beliefs taught to men, because they appreciate the mental health problems those traditional ideas produce. Those ideas may be more deeply held by older men than the younger ones, by upper-class and working-class men than middle-class men, and, in the UK, by men in the North more than the South, but they remain deeply embedded across the male population.

All of which presents a problem for brands. Because if brands are to have any power, they must meet actual needs. But that is very hard to do when the needs remain unexpressed.

When we set up our research practice specialising in female audiences the challenge was a different one. Women tend to find it easier to access, identify and express their needs. Many can do it very fluently in fact. But when women expressed their needs, they weren’t being heard – mainly, as we proposed then, because those needs did not match with the masculine perspective.

We have set about finding new and better ways of making sure women’s needs are heard. Our studies of female decision-making are designed to give the female customer an import and credibility that the business community had historically found hard to intuitively assimilate.

‘Sneaky sexism’ is on the rise in advertising

Increasingly, because now most brands target men and women, we are often asked to investigate male audiences too. And to understand if and how their tendencies and preferences differ from female customers. What has been striking when we work on these projects is that men often have a vast untapped pool of hopes, dreams and desires that few brands, and some entire categories, recognise. Because men – being men – are keeping their needs to themselves.

Like many successful experiments, we reached this conclusion by accident. The same methods and practices we use when researching women can, it seems, successfully prise open the closed box where men’s feelings can reside.

Over-emphasising the non-linear, feelings, the aesthetic and the sensory, the social and the cultura is key. This is not because we believe women find hard facts or product performance unimportant but because so often the world tells women that the criteria they prioritise in their decision-making are less important: how things look should not matter as much as how they work; how brands make you feel should not matter as much as how they are better than other brands in performance terms. In prioritising these aspects of decision-making in our explorations, we find men more forthcoming and less resistant to disclosure.

Marketing to female audiences is becoming shockingly polarised

Unexpected expression

Male customers express themselves in ways that brands do not expect and have often not heard before. Not all the men in every group respond in this way – some are resolute in offering surface responses. But there are usually enough men prepared to get into it and take the conversation to a very different place than it would have gone without using these methods.

Our approach involves co-creation most often using visual stimulus. We ask men to bring mood boards as a pre-task, usually focused on feelings, hopes and fears, always visual; we ask respondents to thoughtfully fill out The Proust Questionnaire to reveal motivations and drivers. In discussion, we push for feelings not just thoughts, and use projective techniques to pull down defences. The result has been to surface needs that had not been previously identified, providing brands with new opportunities for product and communication development.

Some particular cases might help bring this to life.

We were researching attitudes to treating a relatively minor health condition among both men and women. Brands in this part of the private health sector focus primarily on women. And indeed, the women responded as we had expected. The mood boards they developed catalogued a sense of frustration and shame about visible ‘flaws’ that blight a picture-perfect feminine image.

What was surprising was that depth of feeling was matched and exceeded in men who we had all imagined would be more pragmatic. They felt the condition was an affront to their masculinity. The imagery the men chose articulated a powerful sense of isolation, a bleak loneliness in the suffering of the condition, and a palpable fear of ageing which they felt the condition represented.

It is often in the categories that traditionally skewed female or where women have tended to be the decision maker that these missed opportunities lie.

A wide-ranging discussion around health then revealed many more fears and frustrations they had about their bodies, and about their inability to find the time between work and family life to address their own health needs. The increased burden on them of childcare and work, just as the increased burden on women of childcare and work, meant their needs – just as so often women’s needs – dropped out of the picture completely.

There was an opportunity to target men and to do so in a way that was the opposite of the highly rational approach that had been used, meaning their needs could be properly met.

Similarly, when researching gifting, we found women to be hugely engaged and habits already largely set. They like giving presents, they give lots of presents, they know where to buy presents, and so they are the obvious target audience.

Men, typically, do not buy gifts very often. In the male sample, gift-giving was considered fraught and risky. Men giving presents to men – even close friends – made them feel very vulnerable. Men felt giving gifts to women was likely to end in failure and disappointment, so they avoided it unless it was a needs-must like Christmas or a birthday.

But it was also true that men wanted to buy gifts and they wanted to get it right. Men wanted to give their friends presents, but they felt embarrassed to do so. Men wanted to get presents for their partners, but they were afraid to get it wrong. The need to connect with gifts is there in men, but there is not a brand facilitating that need getting met.

It is often in the categories that traditionally skewed female or where women have tended to be the decision maker that these missed opportunities lie.

Male grooming and fashion have already broken down barriers and (some) men feel very comfortable and more confident engaging with them because brands have made huge efforts to meet men’s needs. But there are so many other categories where men’s needs are not investigated in a way that means they surface properly, and they therefore remain unmet: healthcare, gifting, travel, grocery shopping, food brands, shopping for children – toys and clothes, pet care.

It is a now widely understood fact that brand growth comes from driving penetration. Unmet male needs are often a huge untapped growth opportunity. Understanding those needs in a way that gives men permission to express them is the key to unlocking that growth.