Damsel in Defense Review

If you've ever read anything about advertising, you'll know that one of the most elementary principles is to appeal to your audience's basic instincts.

The most basic instinct of all is survival, and that's why Damsel in Defense will work as a business.

What Damsel in Defense sells is survival tools for women. From personal protection from muggers to kid-finder alarms to broken nail kits, they've got a whole range of products for women, all neatly packaged in pink and ready to go.

The problem is, even with great products marketing is a tricky thing: get it wrong and your whole product range will suffer. Let's take a look.

What do Damsels Need for Their Own Defense?

The product lineup can be separated into four areas:

“Hermergency”
Security on the Go
Pepper Spray
Stun Guns

Hermergency

We love this product…we just don't love the name.

We can't quite put our finger on it, but this product is not well named, for two reasons. One, the fabricated word has some sort of “trans gender” connotation to it..taken out of context, it could mean anything. Please don't let humor websites get a hold of this one! FARK.com would have a ball tearing this apart.

Secondly, it's also slightly derogatory to women. It's supposed to be an emergency kit for being stranded roadside. It includes a food bar, jumper cables, playing cards, water, and the like. Why would a woman need this more so than a man? Aren't women capable of storing jumper cables in the trunk, and why do they have to be pink?

The name of the pouch is also confusing: “Junk in the Trunk”. Doesn't that mean something else, also very derogatory towards women?

“Hermergency” consists of 5 products, actually:

Junk in the Trunk
Stash on the Dash. Girlies items like bobby pins, toothbrush Chapstick.
Gimme a Sign. If you're stuck inside your car, communicate with large pink signs so you don't have to get out.
Wristle. It's a whistle braided into a bracelet lanyard which can be unraveled to 7 feet in case you need to…rappel down a mountain?
Breakaway. This is a clip so you can clip your most important items to something accessible. Worth maybe…$.50: and found at checkout aisles at Home Depots nationwide.

Security on the Go

The second group of products feature something called Where's Yo Baby Kid Tracker. Who are we marketing to here, crackhead mothers? The name is offensive, and makes light of a situation that's terribly grim…losing your baby. Who does that?

Here are the other products offered under the Security on the Go label:

Road Trip. Car window breaker and seatbelt cutter.
Sassy Skincare. Tiny personal skincare bottle that's really a place to stash valuables.
Step Off. This alerts a woman to when a door is being opened.
Holla Hers. Personal alarm/keychain.
Holla at Me. Another personal alarm, and the website does not clarify what the difference would be between #4 and this one.
Sock it to Me. They're little weapons.

Again, useful products that play right into the fear-mongering marketing ploys so easy to manipulate, but take a look at the byline for the “Holla at Me” product. Why the “ghetto speak”?

If you attack, I’m gonna fight you like a man so I won’t be screamin’ like a girl.

Pepper Spray and Stun Guns: Love These!

Pepper spray is pepper spray, and stun guns are stun guns. These are the real products of value, in our estimation, and seem to have packaging designed by different (better) marketing professionals, too.

Who Buys This Line of products?

Are these products really targeting poor, uneducated women who live in dangerous areas? Is that what the ghetto speak is all about? Is that the derogatory messages are all about?

…because we can tell you right now: any woman with half a brain is going to be very turned off by the labeling, the descriptions, and the lack of substance to most of the products in the Hermergency and Security on the Go product bundles.

It's a shame, because this is a wonderful idea…it's just not packaged in a very savvy way. It limits the market by “talking down” to women who don't know any better. Perhaps there's a real market out there…just don't market it to your local Mensa club for geniuses!