Women also face a condition unique to their gender that they have felt too ashamed to talk about openly: perinatal depression, which affects one in eight women who are pregnant or recently gave birth. Most women suffered alone and behind closed doors for fear that others would judge them as a failure as a mother. That is, until the state of Maryland, seeing the opportunity to help women feel better, understood and launched "Healthy New Moms: Maryland's Campaign to End Depression During and After Pregnancy," with a website and toll-free hotline for women with perinatal depression.
Currently there are dozens of websites dedicated to educating women about the symptoms, resources and treatment in an effort to make women recognize that their health is more important than avoiding embarrassment.
One last illustration of how mass marketing can increase acceptance can be found by watching primetime television. Deep in heated competition for singles, Chemistry.com and eHarmony have run television commercials and online videos that attack the other company's policies or positioning. The unintended consequence of all this exposure and press coverage is an increased awareness and decreased negative connotation for the industry as a whole. Few people would have guessed that every time Dr. Neil Clark Warren, founder of eHarmony, appears in a television commercial, the result is a spike in traffic not only to its own website but also to its rivals Match.com, Yahoo Personals and PerfectMatch.com.
2. Celebrity endorsements and acceptance
When pop culture icons embrace a product, it experiences instant cachet. If you put your product in the right hands, you might not have to do any marketing at all.
Celebrity acceptance -- albeit unexpected -- was a lifesaver for Cadillac, a brand formerly known for being a favorite of elderly consumers. High-profile athletes and actors, like Shaquille O'Neal, Calista Flockhart and Adam Sandler, bought Cadillac's luxury sport-utility Escalade and pimped around town for all the world to see and admire. In a matter of weeks, the product line turned into a contemporary status symbol, and well-known rappers had nicknamed the vehicle "The Slade." Sales to various demographics -- from hip hop artists to soccer moms -- shot through the roof, and since then, the brand's livelier reputation hasn't seemed to push away its original customers.
Keep in mind that the goal is to work with the celebrities or athletes' lifestyle so that they will actually use the brand on their "off" days, not just on camera.
Another example of Hollywood's positive impact on a shunned topic was the hit television show, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," which shocked the primetime public in 2003 by portraying gay men offering personal grooming tips and style advice to straight men. Metrosexuals -- men who are passionate about fashion, interior design and culture -- across the nation felt liberated, and The New York Times published a Sunday feature titled, "Metrosexuals Come Out."
No longer did they have to "sneak" squirts of facial cleanser from their female partners' cabinets. In 2005, L'Oréal Paris' annual report stated that men's skincare was the company's fastest growing sector. Today, cosmetic companies are providing an abundance of male-targeted products, such as tanning lotions and anti-aging eye creams.