2012 Sessions/Speakers

Pepper Miller wants to elevate your understanding of Black Women– to increase your cultural IQ and encourage you to connect with this valuable consumer segment in a relevant way. To do that, this 2005 winner of the You Take The Cake best speaker award at M2W®, creates a mosaic picture of Black America and offers a deeper and more intimate look at the evolving concept of what it means to be a Black woman today. For example:

• The definition of the Black family is changing: While 71% of all Black births are to single moms, this doesn’t mean they are bad moms.
• At the same time, young single and accomplished childless Black women break the stereotypes about young Black women.
• In fact many Black women are delaying, or forgoing, childbearing at a higher rate. In 2008, 1.7 million Black women 20-34 (39.1%) had no children vs. 1.46 million, or 34.3%, childless women in 2003.
• The Internet is not necessarily an equalizer: Although Black women are all over the net, they tend to congregate and share their stories in relevant online communities that make up the powerful, yet under the radar, Black social network and Black blogosphere.

These insights about the changing Black female, including understanding who she is today, recognizing the relationship she has with your brand and more successfully engaging her is critical to successfully growing your market share. Real insights are more than light bulb moments. They are gleaned from opening up to people and situations that are completely different from our own. This dynamic presentation, with the wealth of opportunities it reveals, will lead marketers to one impossible-to-ignore conclusion: Black still matters.

American women have evolved over the decades and today are in a position of newfound power. While they are seeking to embrace this power and make their own choices, there are persistent expectations for women to do it all, look good, and be nice, regardless of their generation or their age. This dichotomy suggests there is an opportunity to market to women in a new way—a way that is consistent with their desire to set their own course and follow their own motivations whether they are Millennials, Generation X, or Baby Boomers.

For marketers, this means there is an opportunity to forge a new relationship with women, one founded on empathic understanding rather than one formed simply from an informed vantage point, one founded on women’s internal motivations rather than the persistent expectations that have passed across generations. From which mindset are you marketing?

Companies are spending millions of dollars every year to target women with new products and services yet too many ‘female targeted’ initiatives fail. Is it bad research or product design? Is it bad creative or messaging? The answer is No! Marketing has done its job. But has anyone engaged the sales force?

While most companies are spending huge amounts of money in the women’s market, not a dime has been spent training sales staffs on how to sell in to and effectively communicate your company’s women’s strategy to your customers.

In this entertaining and engaging presentation, marketers will get a hands-on feel for what their salesperson’s blind spots and challenges are when it comes to selling in women’s initiatives to customers. As an outcome of this session, marketers will be better prepared to return to their companies and engage in helping their sales force build cultural capability regarding selling to women.

Defending the Caveman is a hilarious play about the ways men and women relate to each other. Without taking sides, this insightful comedy discusses the ongoing battle for understanding between the sexes. Caveman was written by comedian Rob Becker over a three year period during which he made an informal study of psychology, sociology, and prehistory.

Originally opening in San Francisco in 1991 Defending the Caveman soon moved to Dallas. After a year in Dallas—now an irrefutable comedic phenomenon - Caveman went on to sold-out engagements in Washington DC, Philadelphia and Chicago, before opening on Broadway in 1995. Running two and a half years, playing 702 performances at the Helen Hayes Theater, Caveman entered the record books as the longest running solo play in Broadway history.

Still holding that record today, Defending the Caveman has gone on to become a worldwide hit that has been translated into 18 different languages and performed in more than 45 countries. Couples all across America (and around the world) are in love with Defending the Caveman.