Pen Marketed Toward Women Receiving Mixed Reviews

By Anne-Marie Green

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - How many times have you seen ads, commercials or products geared toward men or women? It's nothing new but recently it seems Bic, the company that makes razors, has cut a little to close to the nerve with its new line of pens "for her."

"Do you think there would be something different about a pen made for women?" asked reporter Anne-Marie Green.

"No, ink is ink," said Romona Ashmore.

She's not alone. It seems, instead of appealing to the female market Bic has offended a lot of potential customers who have taken to Twitter, Facebook and on Amazon, where there are over 40 pages of sarcastic and pretty funny reviews of the new pen."

"5 stars. I'm so tired of ruining my lip liner pencil to write checks and pulling out my man's pen at the beauty parlor," read one review on Amazon.

"5 stars. The ink in my new Bic-Lady pen is made of sugar and spice and my I's are automatically dotted with hearts!" read another review on Amazon.

I like the pen but the only real difference I found was in the price. This regular Bic pen is about 99 cents; this pen for her is $2.50!

"Hey, lets have a pen for women, we'll paint it pink. They'll love it! It's insulting," Marc Brownstein said.

Marc Brownstein of the Brownstein Marketing Group says gender based marketing works only if the product has value. Ten years ago if consumers didn't buy the sales pitch they wouldn't buy the product, but now they tell the world how they feel by posting on social media sites.

"It's the consumer speaking and the consumer calls the shots today," explained Brownstein.

Bic did get one positive thing from this, a lot of publicity.