MARKETING TO WOMEN

I came accross a very old posting on the Computer Idee Blog today, announcing a new navigation system specially designed for women. I guess the product was no big hit, as I cannot find it on the manufacturer’s website anymore. Judging from these pictures taken from the Computer Idee website, this was a serious case of painting things pink.

The discussion about the article showed exactly how polarized women are about such a strategy: 26 women respond by saying how great this is and how they immediately want to purchase one, whereas about the same number of women feel offended by the pink color and especially and even more so about the simplified menus and the bigger buttons. And some more or less agree with both sides by stating that they have enough intelligence and freedom to decide for themselves that they like pink. Obviously, there still is a big group of female buyers for pink products…

Apart from the discussion on the design of navigation systems, there is something to separate systems for women as the navigation process is totally different for men and women. I just read a post on Wonderbranding about differences in the way women look: women have a greater peripheral vision than men so they see a whole range of things (as opposed to focussing on one thing). Besides that, someone told me yesterday that prefer to navigate using landmarks and descriptions such as: turn right after the cafe instead of ‘turn right at the second crossing’. However, I haven’t found proof of that.

Ikea found a really nice way to launch it’s first store in NY: it placed gigantic pop up Ikea room settings throughout the city. The cardboard boxes contained complete interiors, obviously furnished with IKEA stuff. Here’s one that was placed on Cadman Plaza.

They also built massive sculptures of local landmarks like the Empire State Buiding or Brooklyn Bridge out of more than 1000 Ikea cardboard boxes.

Even though most comments on the internet on this campaign were very positive, some people are critical. Comments like: I ” Ikea’s great and all, but it’s frustrating to shop in a store where bedspreads are called “Dahlbrugg” and bookshelves “Lenkii” or some such thing, instead of being labelled what they are.” are merely funny, but serious there are also more serious objections such as worries about the weekend traffic jams to the store. This shows once more that advertisers cannot expect discussions to be restricted to the campaign that’s out there. And that means a whole new attitude towards consumers; not just being nice on the marketing side and then forgetting about the client when he or she is asking for service.

Something that Justien Marseille said last week at the VEA conference What women want struck me. She described the world as an ever more feminin place, and according to her one thing that companies would have to change is not to sell a product to a consumer, but to sell a relationship. That’s typically something that women are looking for. I believe Marseille is so right when she says that the old paradigm of hard product selling is so outdated. It feels kind of wrong when a company is really trying to get you in as a customer, and then afterwards treats you as a merely annoying insect. Unfortunately, that is still harsh reality. Most companies are still trying to trick people into a certain purchase only to ignore them afterwards. That doesn’t go down well with women though. 

Yesterday, Harvard professor of economic studies Claudia Goldin was visiting Holland and gave a lecture at the Department of OCW: Education, Culture and Sciences. She’s an expert in the field of economic change due to the entrance of women in the workforce. According to her, Holland is now on the level of Indiana in terms of female participation in the workforce. Yes indeed, Indiana, the rural, conservative state in the Mid-West… Although the number of women that work is on pair with other European countries, the amount of working hours is substantially lower; Dutch and Norwegian women work 1300 hours a year on average, the least of all OESO countries. That comes down to less than 20 hours per week. Goldin argues that this extreme low amount of hours spent working holds the Dutch back from what she calls the ’silent revolution’, the crucial change for women to an equal position in society. 

There’s an article on Goldin in a ww.nrcnext.nl/links, but you have to register to read it.

In my car, on my way to our office, I listened to BNR radio when suddenly two women crackled about little hammers, little drills and little screwdrivers, or as they call it: the new She’ s got it all toolkit for women by Be-izzy.

My first thought; Yes! Marketing to women! and they started well; research shows that woman are more independent, are into more home improvement jobs, are more precise then men (better in activities like measuring) and they prefer to work with their own tools…

But then the 2 (female) creators suddenly started chatting about their little drills, little screws, little articulations and even a little gardenset with a little cultivator, a little scoop and a little pruner… how cute!

And to become more enthusiastic; after 15 dazzling minutes how to spell the URL I finally found the website! During the radio-interview they claimed to be the first company who came up with a serious toolset for women. But with a little bit of Google I found other serious toolkits for women. For example the Tomboy. Okay, it’s pink but this toolkit exists (already) since 2007, not to say anything about what’s serious and what’s not. And sadly to say for Be-izzy, there are more on the web!

And then, while clicking through the website and watching some movies suddenly a sultry women voice says ‘with the Izzy handgloves from now on you don’t have to be afraid for dirty hands anymore while gardening!” while a woman on her pink Crocs works on her little balcony.

Definitely think there is a market for home improvement tools for women but maybe its better not to talk about little cute tools, advertise with a sultry women voice and before you go online check some keywords you think women will look for if they are looking for handy home improvement tools for women so they can find you online.

I’ll certainly be among the first in line to get the brand new 3G Apple iphone. It’s been hard enough for me not to buy one before the introduction of the new 3G version. It turns out I’m not the only woman hooked on smartphones. The New York Times mentions a big shift for the phone industry as smartphone sales to women rise at a faster pace than among men. According to Nielsen, last October, one out of four iPhone owners was a women, and by March this had already changed to one out of three. Smart phones are now smaller, look better and are cheaper, making them more appealing to women. Manufacturers once believed women wanted their gadgets only in pink and holding a mirror, but it turns out that women like toys-for-the-boys, but more logically designed and cheaper.

The Telegraph also published an article on the ‘gadget revolution’ caused by tech-savy women. According to Sony Ericsson, women spend more money on gadgets than shoes (!) - on average, $764 a year.

The New York Times article also mentions that phone makers increasingly see women as the path to the entire household and start marketing to women. Ads for Blackberry have started to turn up in women’s magazines such as Elle, Martha Stewart Living and Oprah Winfrey’s O. The Blackberry Pearl is one of their best selling phones (and rightly so!).

Women use their smartphones to organize their business and family life. According to Nielsen, two-thirds of women with smartphones say they use them primarily for pleasure rather than business Comparing this to 42 percent among men probably shows that either men just spend more time working or women communicate a lot more about the household. Or both?

Topics related to women seem to be on the agenda everywhere. Today I read about the launch of a new series on Dutch television, covering three women who set up a consultancy, specializing in getting women in top career positions. The series are part of a campaign called ‘CEO becomes SHEO’ to counter negative stereotypes about working women (moms) and create more top positions for women.

Reebok’s renewed focus on women-wear sums up their current marketing strategy: Befriending their women customers.
Reebok is part of Adidas AG of Germany, with close to 500 stores across India. It now intends to focus on ‘women only’ outlets, where the products on sale convey a thematic appeal.
Keeping in with this strategy, Reebok opened an exclusive showroom last Sunday, selling womenswear of the Reebok brand in Chennai — the first such retail outlet in South India.
The shop sells sportswear, casual wear and footwear products, catering mainly to young women: focussing on women’s category and creating new product lines.

Earlier, Reebok has launched a 15000-sq feet exclusive store at Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad, the largest single-brand store in the world.
Reebok India plans to increase its store count to over 600 outlets before 2008. As of now, Reebok has 500 exclusive Reebok Stores, 200 shop-in-shop outlets, and 2500 dealer outlets.

Remarkable remark in het Parool today. In a review of a Celine Dion concert in Amsterdam Arena, the journalist remarks the overwhelming majority of women in the audience as opposed to the male audience at concerts of Motorhead.
He adds that there must be something like female- and male music. He notices a watershed in reaction to Dions music; men start feeling unwell while women start to shine with a soft shimmering romantic light. Personally I’m not a big fan of Celine Dions music, but I must be an exception then.

It is no surprise anymore that women are discovering domains formerly known as male territory. Today, I read a post on a new example of this: Mailandfemale, a Dutch porn retailer just announced the growth of the number of sex movies specifically targeted to women from 25 to 100. The company reports a decline regular porn dvd’s due to the growing use of internet among men. So while men switch to the internet women are starting to mail order porn dvd’s. It’d be really interesting to know why women prefer the use of DVD over the use of the internet. Maybe the women targeted porn is too hard to find on the internet?