Marketing to Women Online

Do We Need More Women and Minority Hiring in Advertising?

I just love a good old fashioned-brawl.

New York City Human Rights Commission Vs. Madison Avenue........The issue - diversity hiring.

I must admit, I was really looking forward to seeing the Madison Ave. suits climb into the ring with their ultra cool designer eyeglasses and "I'm too sexy for my cellphone" credit card size gadgets going off every 3 seconds.   

But  it didn't happen.   As New York City Councilman Larry Seabrook so elegantly put it, the advertising agencies....

"ran like chickens with their asses plucked clean"

How do you really feel, Larry?

There have been so many interesting editorials and sound-offs about the issue I couldn't possibly quote them all.

What's really going on here?   Is Madison Avenue still just a bunch of good old boys?  Sure you have characters like Neil French mouthing off and getting themselves in hot water.  But I don't think it's nearly as simple as that.

Would I personally love to see more women and minorities in higher positions in agencies?   You bet I would.    But honestly?   I don't think you're going to see a lot of change.    Part of the problem is these agencies are public.  They have to cater to Wall Street.   

Maybe it's truth, maybe it's just perception, but if you were on the board of a major company, would you have the guts to hire a female CEO?    Let's take a real world example....

Xerox was struggling badly in 2000.  They needed to make drastic changes.  They announced Anne Mulcahy was taking over as CEO.   In Anne's own words...

the day I was announced as CEO, I think the stock dropped another 20%

Was that because the market didn't have faith in Xerox?  Or was it because the market didn't have faith in Xerox's choice for CEO?    If she had been a man, would the stock have dropped 20%?    We'll never know.   For the record, Mulcahy turned the company around.

Xerox is growing again, the stock price has quadrupled on her watch, and this month, Forbes named Mulcahy the fifth-most-powerful woman in the world.

But this had to have a chilling effect on other public companies. Who wants to risk a 20% drop in their stock price by appointing a woman to lead the company?  Wall Street aside, what else could be going on?  Why the lack of women and minorities in high positions in advertising agencies?   

If your target audience is women, wouldn't it make sense to have women at the top of your marketing decisions?   Wouldn't that increase your chances for success?  I think it can, but not in all cases.  Take the case of Revlon.

Women and Technology - How to Buy a DVD Recorder

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Sorry - just needed to let that out.   

Why, please please tell me why technology marketers just don't get it.   I lost an entire chunk of my weekend to a technology challenge.   Was it buying and self installing an entire home theater system?   Was it rewiring all the electronics in my house so I could turn on the coffee maker while sitting on the toilet?  Was it some other crazy involved technological project that you would expect to lose 37 hours of your life to?   

No.  I was simply bold enough to attempt to.......copy a DVD.

Yup, that's right - make a copy of a DVD.   37 hours and $300 later, I own a high end DVD burner, have DVD copying software on my computer, am as close as I think I'll ever come to being an expert on DVD's.    But I still do not have a copy of my DVD.

Now, right off the bat - let me tell you - this was NOT a copyright protected DVD.   

So, where did I go wrong?  But more importantly, where did the websites and offline stores (yes, I even stooped to going to brick and mortar electronic stores - three of whom who were so horrible if I name them I could get sued for slander)  go wrong. 

First - I wanted a DVD burner for my computer.   Yet almost every single website I went to did not specify if the DVD burner (or recorder) was designed for use with a computer or with a home entertainment system.

Would it be so friggin hard to state in your product description - "This DVD burner is designed for use with computers."    The only clue you have is if somewhere buried in the product specs they tell you what operating specs you need to have on your computer (though they never use the word computer) Sometimes it specifies PC, but what if I had a Mac?   In the rare chance they had a close up of the back, you could look to see what kind of jacks were there, but believe me, those were VERY rare.

Plus -is it designed to be an internal drive where you have to actually install it in your computer?  or does it have a USB cable where you simply attach it to your computer?

One of many priceless moments in my offline experience was when......

Post Secret vs. Share Your Secret

Wow - talk about hitting you in your solar plexus.   Who could have imagined the power of a postcard with a profound individual truth.   That's exactly what you'll find, postcard after postcard, on the wildly popular website PostSecret.com.   

The caption on this one is "I'm afraid I'm responsible for my own loneliness"

PostSecret.com features postcard size images sent in anonymously with text that shares a secret.  Here's how the site describes it:

You are invited to anonymously contribute your secrets to PostSecret. Each secret can be a regret, hope, funny experience, unseen kindness, fantasy, belief, fear, betrayal, erotic desire, feeling, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything - as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before.

The secrets range from funny to heart-wrenching. Here are some examples....

"I'm just not one of the cool kids"

"I'm afraid that I'm responsible for my own loneliness"

"My boyfriend is addicted to Internet porn.  He promises he'll stop, but he never does.  And every time I catch him at it, I love him a little less."

"When I dream about my wedding (years from now) the thing I get most excited about my dance with my dad."

Other posts range from funny admissions to thoughts of suicide.   

Some people have suggested that the "Share Your Secret" campaign for Secret Deodorant was an attempt to imitate the popularity of PostSecret.com.  I wrote recently about my views of why the "Share Your Secret" campaign doesn't work.  It's an important example of how dangerous it is to go off of surface information without understanding deeper motivations. 

Here's why I think PostSecret.com does work.   

Do Women Respond to Sexual Ads?

Warning!  This post includes honest discussions of sex and porn.   If these topics make you squeamish, stop reading now.

OK - for those of you brave enough to continue, here we go.

We've certainly seen how different genders react differently to advertising messages.  What women want and are attracted to can be different from what men want and are attracted to. This is not true in every case, but depending on the subject matter, the differences can be striking.

Sex is one such subject matter.   I've written before about studies on how men and women react differently to sex in advertising.

Now there is another study with similar results.  Do fashion magazine ads that ooze with pictures of sexy seductive women work?  Especially magazines ads aimed almost 100% at women? 

A research team at the University of Florida in Gainesville studied this question.  They conducted a study where 100 college aged women rated photos of attractive women.   the participants rated their emotional reactions to the pictures.   

The results were quite interesting.

Women and Ringtones

So I'm like, all excited.   I've been sick to death of the ringtone on my cell phone and went online to find a new "hip" ringtone I could download.   I quickly learned the difference between a "ringtone" which sounds like a really bad karaoke version of the song, and "realtone" which sounds like you're listening to the song on a radio.

I'm debating between Sean Paul and Shakira, but finally go with Cherish Do It To It.  I can't wait for my first phone call when my phone will get down with it's bad self and start crooning:

Bounce wit it drop wit it

Lean wit it rock wit it

Snap wit it

All  my ladies pop yo back wit it

Do it to it do it to it

You know the world be rockin to it

Everything goes great til I realize my particular phone model can't download the song.  And it gets worse from there.  After much searching and visiting some message boards, I realize my bare bones phone basically can't download any decent ringtones.

Now I'm pissed.    Due to the Verizon Wireless LG VX3300 phone I got only a few months ago, I am now stuck in permanent bad ring tone detention.   Every time my phone rings in a restaurant I will be reminded of my tragically unhip status and have to settle for the crappy table near the kitchen since the Maitre D will give one listen and know I am not worthy of dining with the fashionable and beautiful.   

I will be walking down the street and when my phone rings everyone under 40 will point at me and laugh because instead of "bounce wit it drop wit it" I will have the equivalent of polka music emanating from my phone. 

Verizon Wireless - I have a real beef with you.   Why didn't you tell me when I bought this phone that it would not support customized "realtones".   I would have gladly paid more to buy a phone that did.