It’s a strategy that has been used for decades to market products to women: take a normal-size item, color it pink and make it smaller. Voila! You have yourself a product “made for women.”

This “shrink it and pink it” strategy has been employed by companies to reach the female consumer for decades, with varying degrees of success. At the end of the day, though, it is something that is downright lazy, since women want more than something that is simply small and pink or purple.

That hasn’t stopped Honda from releasing a new car made for women in Japan. If we were to ask you what two of the most prominent characteristics of the Honda Fit She's were, we bet you wouldn’t need many guesses to get the correct answer. Yup, it’s smaller and pinker than other cars in the Honda fleet.

Now, perhaps this type of marketing strategy will prove successful in East Asia. However, we have a hard time believing the Fit She's would be welcomed with open arms in the States. In fact, Dodge once tried to market a car to women, and it didn’t work out.

The whole “shrink it and pink it” idea of marketing to women is lazy, and many times ineffective. Do women like the color pink? To a certain degree, yes, but that doesn’t mean that we want or need everything we buy to have the same hue.

It will be interesting to see how Japanese women react to the Honda Fit She's. If it is successful in Japan, what are the odds we see one in the United States? We doubt the Fit She's will make the journey across the Pacific, but who knows? Stranger things have happened.

FletcherPR is a national communications firm that specializes in reaching women through the power of media. Headquartered in Knoxville, TN with staff in Nashville & Los Angeles, we are a full-service agency providing strategic public relations, social media and marketing communications services to our clients throughout the U.S.