Marketing to Women Online

Women and Poker

You got to know when to hold ‘em…..know when to fold ‘em….know when to walk away…and when to click out and shut down your computer.

Seems America has gone crazy over….POKER.   You’ve seen the World Poker Tour Championship on ESPN. Now you can catch some kind of poker tournament on TV almost every night.   Cowboy hats and baseball caps pulled low over the brow, dark glasses, brooding faces showing no emotion whatsoever….UNTIL HE GOES ALL IN – HE JUMPS UP FROM THE TABLE – HE’S PACING – HERE COMES THE FLOP, THE TURN, THE RIVER – OHHH! HE’S FINISHED wiped out by – a woman?

It’s true.  Women still make up a minority of poker players, but they’re entering the game in record numbers.   Top female players like Jennifer Tilly, Cloney Gowen, and Annie Duke are blazing a brave new trail through all that cigar smoke and testosterone. 

When to Create a "Women Only" Section

It’s a question I’m asked all the time – “Are you SURE you’re not Jennifer Aniston?” No actually it’s “When do you create a ‘women’s only’ area on your website?’ In other words, when do you create a separate area for women and when do you simply try to accommodate their needs in your main website.

This is the same question many companies are asking about their offline world as well. David Lorenzo found a great example in a new hotel that’s created a whole separate floor for women travelers.

A luxury London hotel has closed a door on men with the launch of an exclusive women-only wing. The five star Grange Cityin Bow, east London, has designed 68 rooms with unique facilities aimed specifically at businesswomen.

The facilities combine pampering and security.

Backlit make up mirrors, sunken baths and illuminated wardrobes are part of the female friendly service which will be staffed by women only.

Best Buy's "JIll" Goes to the Web

Best Buy is having great success using personas to redesign their stores. Let’s see how they do with using personas to design their website. (At Future Now this is one of the most important parts of our Persuasion Architecture process).

 In my last post I talked about “Jill”, the soccer mom persona created by Best Buy. She lives for her kids and is intimidated by electronic stores. Let’s see what kind of an experience Jill has on the website. I’ll give her two tasks. One is to find a Barbie Digital Camera for her daughter. The other is to research a new TV. 

 Note – one of the main ways in which women use the web is to do research on products they’re interested in - especially in an area where they feel intimidated and want more knowledge in order to feel more comfortable and confident making a purchase decision.

 So – Jill goes to the home page in search of a Barbie Digital Camera. In the active window (main center area – the prime real estate) she clicks on “SAVE 10% ON DIGITAL CAMERAS”.  I’ll tell you right now – this pathway is a dead end. She sees a lot of digital cameras, but none of them are the Barbie Digital Camera she’s looking for.

 If she gets frustrated, she may go to the site search and type in “Barbie Digital Camera”. In this case, the site search does a fabulous job and pulls up the product right away.

Or - she may go to the left hand navigation, and click on the link to "Toys".

 

Best Buy Personas

Hurray! Another company who gets it. Best Buy is using personas to redesign their stores. And they have more than one persona. Another Hooooyaaaah. They have Buzz (the young tech enthusiast), Barry (the wealthy professional man), Ray (the family man) and, Jill.

In the Washington Post’s article – Retail – Profiling for Profit, Best Buy talks about “Jill” and the changes they made to the store in order to accommodate her.

"Jill,"is a  code name for a soccer-mom type who is the main shopper for the family but usually avoids electronics stores. She is well-educated and usually very confident, but she is intimidated by the products at Best Buy and the store clerks who spout words like gigabytes and megapixels.

 Ok – I’m smelling stereotype here. But let’s see what changes they’ve made to accommodate Jill.

Nike Imitates Dove?

"Big Butts, Thunder Thighs, Tomboy Knees" -  so reads the headline from an article from AdAge about Nike's new campaign that tries to imitate Dove's success by featuring "real" women.

The ads feature copy like this:

"My Butt is big and round like the letter C, and 10,000 lunges have made it rounder but not smaller. And that’s just fine. It’s a space heater for my side of the bed. It’s my ambassador. To those who walk behind me, it’s a border collie that herds skinny women away from the best deals at clothing sales. My butt is big and that’s just fine. And those who might scorn it are invited to kiss it. Just do it.”

Um.....ok.    I've never really thought of my butt as a space heater or a border collie - but I'll try to go with you here. 

This article sparked a furry of IM's and emails between my colleagues at Future Now and Michele Miller.   Here are some of the very strong opinions expressed about Nike's new campaign:

Lands End in Kmart?

The CEO of Land’s End, Mindy Meads, left the company abruptly late last week.

The reason for her departure was not announced, but insiders say Mindy objected to the plan to place Lands End clothing in Kmart.

I would have left, too.   Read the full article in Adage.

Industry watchers said Ms. Meads’ abrupt departure followed a battle with Sears executives on expanded distribution of the brand in both Sears and Kmart stores. The internal battle raises the question: If even an insider is questioning the combined value of the Sears/Kmart retail brand, what other brands might follow?

Should a Man or a Woman Design Your Site?

Thanks to Michael Martine for turning me on to a short but interesting article Web Sites Have Sex Appeal. A study at the University of Glamorgan in the United Kingdom found that the sexes reacted very differently to sites when surfing the web.

 
The study found members of each sex preferred websites designed by their own sex.  Not a big surprise since so many web designers design what they like, as opposed to what’s truly best for their audience. 

 

Nevertheless, a look at the web sites of 32 higher education institutions found 94 percent displaying a masculine orientation and just 2 percent a female bias, the study said. This was the case, even though all the schools' target audience was almost equally balanced between the sexes.

 
I’d love to know what criteria they’re using for “masculine orientation” and “female bias”. But my guess is, the numbers probably aren’t too far off.   Be sure to check out Michael’s take on men designing websites for women. 

 
This all begs the question - should you design your website differently for men than for women? The answer – YES YES YES – so much of a yes I could write a whole book about it.  But what do you do when you’re trying to appeal to both sexes?   There are ways to do that, too. (also another books worth of info on this) Note – when I say design websites I’m talking about more than just the template, I’m talking about navigation, usability, content, copy, etc. 

 
Here are just a few things to keep in mind

 
- Men don’t ask for directions. They’ll fumble around your site for a while til they find what they’re looking for.  Women won’t waste the time. If they don’t find what they’re looking for, they’re gone. You better make darn sure your site has clearly defined pathways to get visitors to their relevant information.

- Women are gift givers. (when was the last time your hubby went out and bough Christmas gifts for your relatives?  When was the last time he bought Christmas gifts for his relatives) Your site has to have clear pathways to gift certificates, clear options for including gift messaging, and an easy way to bill one address and ship to another. 

- Women categorize products differently than men.  You can’t just say “shirts” and “dresses”.  Women think of big picture categories – like “summer cocktail outfits.”  Look at how you categorize your products.

 
This is just the tip of the iceberg, but I mention it because I think there’s a very big issue here.  Should companies hire more women to design their websites? Well, I guess that’s one way.  But I’d suggest companies do a better job of understanding what their female website visitors want.  I have a few thousand ideas on that subject.

 

Dove's Real Beauty - Is It Too Real?

I promised you I was going to say something positive about an ad campaign targeted at women. And following the fine example set by my Dad, who I lost recently, I always keep my promises.

 

By now you’ve all heard about Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty”. I just read a fantastic article on the campaign by Seth Stevenson at Slate.

 

Seth brings up several interesting points and it’s fascinating to get an honest opinion from the male point of view. Plus, it’s worth the read just to increase your vocabulary. “Brobdingnagian” - intense or enormous. And my new favorite word - “Bedonkadonk” – you won’t find this one in dictionary.com – but say it out loud 3 times and read it in context and I think you can figure it out.

 

Seth makes the following conclusions:

Short-Term Grade: A. These ads are real attention getters—everyone's talking about them. On that level, they're a smashing success. Also, Dove now owns the "friend of the everywoman" angle. Smart move on their part to spot this open niche and grab it. Finally, if I can get sappy for a moment, it is sort of nice to see the unperfect have their day in the sun.

Overall Grade: D. Sadly, this is not a winning play for the long haul. If Dove keeps running ads like this, women will get bored with the feel-good, politically correct message. Eventually (though perhaps only subconsciously), they'll come to think of Dove as the brand for fat girls. Talk about "real beauty" all you want—once you're the brand for fat girls, you're toast..

Let me just say – don’t take the “brand for fat girls” as being too nasty – you have to read the full article and take it in context. That said – do you agree or disagree with his conclusions? I’m going to do some more thinking and research before I form a definite opinion.

On the website www.dove.com – I DO have some opinions

Dove is doing a lot of things right here. Women like to see themselves in ads. As Dove points out – “Models weigh an average of 23 percent less than the average woman. Twenty years ago, models weighed an average of 8 percent less." Dove’s models are a more accurate representation of what we look like.

 

The website www.dove.com has a wonderful look and feel. Some might say they have too much use of white space, but all that white actually ads to the feel of “clean”.

 

Links like “We’re listening” speak to women’s absolute love of “being heard”.

 

And the Dove Self-Esteem Fund is nothing short of brilliant.

 

However, there are some problems with the website – namely Download Time – 33.25 seconds with a 56K modem for the home page. All those images and external multi-media are making the site extremely slow to load. Slow load times are a major pet peeve for women when it comes to websites.

 

Another problem with the home page is the call to action in the active window. The strongest call to action is “search”, but what are you supposed to be searching for? Is that really the number one action you want visitors to take on the site? They do a better job with interior pages like Real Beauty.

 

So - is all this going to sell more products? David Wolfe at Ageless Marketing has some opinions on the campaign and some actual sales figures.  I will say that when I was in the store the other day – I looked at Dove for the first time. They did succeed in making it onto my radar screen. And that’s a huge first step.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Breast Ad Controversy

Ok – I promise in my next post about an ad campaign I’m going to say something positive. Really. I mean it. The moniker “Nancy Negative” simply doesn’t fit well with me. But some of this is just too good. I mean….you just can’t make this stuff up. 

So who’s the offender this time? Some good old boy investment firm? Another fast food restaurant? A motorcycle ad? Nope – this week’s offender is – Advertising Week. No kiddin. The offensive ad? The advertisement they ran to attract attendees to “Advertising Week” an annual advertising conference that attracts over 40,000 industry people from all over the world. Read the full article.

Advertising Week, an organization that aims to improve the image of the advertising business, has promoted itself with an ad deemed so “sexist,” “moronic” and “tired” that many felt it actually tarnished the industry’s reputation.

The ad, which was created pro bono by Omnicom Group's DDB Worldwide, New York to getpeople to attend the event, and appeared in the July 18 issue of Advertising Age, featured a tightly cropped shot of a woman’s chest in a black bustier. Positioned directly beneath the women’s bust are the words: “Advertising: We All Do It.”

Ok – my biggest complaint here is – I don’t get it. “We all do it”-  are they trying to say “Sex – we all do it” “Staring at women’s chests – we all do it” I think the biggest problem is the message just isn’t clear. There are, of course, two problems here. (sorry – that was bad. descending to their level) The second one being – yes – this ad is going to be offensive to a lot of women. Not all – but definitely many. The article quoted top female ad execs, some who were majorly pissed, and others who were ok with it.

But I must say, my favorite quote came from Jennifer L. Pozner, director of Women In Media & News. Who said

“This sexism isn’t new, but shouldn’t national advertising conferences be celebrating creativity, rather than tired boob jokes?”

You go girl!

Why guys still find boob jokes funny is completely beyond me. It reminds me of my days as a radio creative director.  We had a grunge rock station that had every strip club in town advertising. Being the only copywriter- yours truly had to write all the strip club ads. A male colleague suggested we write an ad with nothing but euphemisms for women’s breasts. “Yeah” I thought. “And what do we do for the other 55 seconds.” But this guy was resourceful. After polling every male in the station from the GM to the UPS delivery guy he came up with 27 different terms.

I just don’t get it. Guess it’s a guy thing – fine for strip clubs, but not the best choice for a national advertising conference.

Parlez Vous Francais?

It’s always important to remember that the Internet is truly a global audience.   I was reminded of this when I noticed a lot of traffic to my blog from a site written in French www.fredcavazza.net.   Seems mon ami Fred found the site and wanted to know what his readers thought about it.   

Now – my French is a little rusty.  So I pulled in my sister to help with the translation.  She is more proficient due to more schooling and a recent two year relationship with a French bartender.  However her new-found phrases of “please make my martini extra dry”, “do you have any Mrs. Robinson fantasies?” (she was dangerously close to cradle robbing) and “nice ass” did not come in particularly helpful when translating the site. (though did you know there’s no word in French for French Kiss?)

We struggled a little, and I specifically asked if the comments were bad that she NOT translate them, but there were some interesting viewpoints.   One reader took offense to the post about Lands End towels feeling she did not define herself by doing laundry, and that I was stereotyping women myself in that post.  She did have a point.   I used age and number of children to describe the woman – the very thing I say not to do.   A definite faux pas.  I will be more careful in the future.

What do les femmes francaises want?   How do they see themselves?   I would imagine it’s different from how American women define themselves.  Do they feel as misunderstood as we do?  Or do advertisers in France do a better job of understanding women?   An interesting question, n’est-ce pas?