How do you target mainstream men in markets where they are not traditionally the consumers? Typical marketers’ responses play to the stereotype: build a proposition around macho fitness (eg. Pepsi Max in low sugar drinks),  turn it into a tool/gadget (eg. Wilkinson Sword secateurs in gardening),  make it a challenge (eg.  Lindt chilli variant in chocolate) and of course make it about sex (eg. Lynx in deodorants).

So, with great respect for tried and tested marketing tricks, I’m pleased to see Philips have launched an iron: the GC4490, presumably named to cue associations with car parts and obscure trade codes for masonry drill-bits. It’s “tool marketing” at its best with a design, as AdFreak  says,  that would be fitting for Darth Vader’s jet ski and it comes with a brilliantly engineered proposition around “more power, more steam, more performance” – an iron as power tool.

It’s a stereotype. But just as real insight often comes from humour (“there’s many a true word spoken in jest”), mass-appeal marketing’s not a bad place to look for frank realities about mainstream society.