New Proof that Men are from Mars & Women are from Venus.

Like we needed any corroboration!

Ladies: If you've ever wondered if your husband/boyfriend/brother/father has tuned out in the middle of an intense discussion (and who among us can't honestly say this has happened)...

Gentlemen: If you've ever found yourself in the awkward position of seeing your boss's mouth moving, you hear angry sounds spewing forth, but you simply can't figure out what he's saying (sound familiar?)...

Then you have experienced first-hand the new scientific finding that says when men are tense, the part of their brains that reads facial expressions and emotions shuts down.

It's not their fault, really. Men are wired to respond like deer in a headlight when under this kind of social stress.

Researcher Mara Mather of the University of Southern California explains, "For men under stress, the regions of the brain used for social understanding became less coordinated with other regions, especially when looking at angry faces."

The men simply shut down. They withdraw, reacting to too much stimulation. Mather suspects hormones. Male brains with higher testosterone level allow less activity in the brain's facial-expression region.

On the other hand, she writes, "For women, those regions were more coordinated. When looking at someone showing emotion, women put themselves in the others' shoes."

Mather's conclusion? "If a man and a woman are in a stressful situation," she writes, "they may want to change their strategies for how they relate to each other."

What does this have to do with marketing?

Successful marketing requires that you understand your audience.

So if you and your spouse find yourselves discussing (ahem) who is going to walk the dog at 3:30 in the morning, my advice is "Keep the lights off!"

Your husband won't see your face, so won't freeze up. Hence you can have a lengthy, adult conversation about the situation. And when you win the argument — I mean discussion — he won't see you smirking in the dark as you roll over to go back to sleep.

Now that's successful marketing.