Marketing to Women Online

Women - Sound Off on Cadillac

Women 35 plus (you know who you are) - How do you feel about Cadillac?  In particular the Cadillac Escalade?

What motivates you to buy a luxury car? 

What current attitudes or beliefs do you have about Cadillac? Are they even on your radar screen?

Submit your comments below.  I'm helping out a new friend who's doing some market research on Cadillac and women 35 plus.   If you can/want to/can do it without screaming - tell us if your age range is  35-44, 45-54, or 55-64.  Don't want to include your age?  no problem - just share your thoughts.  Want to lie about your age - go for it.  I do it all the time.

I will admit -I'm also selfishly interested in your answers for my own research.  Guys - if you have a wife, girlfriend, daughter, friend who has some feelings about Cadillac - share those as well.

So fill in those comment fields.  Thanks for your participation! 

The New Advertising Secret - Strategy

I read something this morning that stopped me mid coffee-sip.  I was so dumbfounded I had to re-read the article twice.

Ad Age has an article about Grey Worldwide's CEO outlining their plans for change. What's his radial new solution that's going to change the world's fifth largest agency network?  Put more focus on strategy.  His first two hires were well known strategic planners Suresh Nair and Nat Puccio.   

'Not had great clarity'
Messrs. Nair and Puccio will work closely with Grey’s chief creative officer and president-North America, Tim Mellors. “In recent times, we’ve not had great clarity in our strategy. One of the huge wastes of time is to use creative teams to get to a strategic insight. That was often a problem on Mars (a former Grey account), where we’d work up 15 different commercials to get to the few that were right on,” said Mr. Mellors. “It would have been easier to start with a strong strategic brief.” Grey had strategic planners on staff, but they didn’t work together as a team. “There’s been inconsistency,” said Mr. Puccio.

What?????    It's 2006 people!   Are you really just now coming to the conclusion that strategy is important?    That it's best to have a clear strategy based on customer insight before you start the creative.   Ya think???

Holy cow.   I'm speechless.

Broken Windows - Everything Matters

So I’m standing in the hall anxious to get started.  I look over and see a short stocky man walking towards me.  He introduces himself with a firm handshake and an eastern European accent.   I look him up and down and hesitantly reply “Um…..Hi”

Why this reticent reaction to a perfectly lovely man?   Because he was going to be standing on my back for the next 70 minutes.   I had taken the plunge and signed up for the Ashiastu massage.  I was expecting a svelte Asian woman. But instead – I got Jovan.   True to form – my initial fears were unfounded.  Jovan had a wonderful touch (who knew toes could feel so much like hands) and my shoulders haven’t felt this good in years.     

There was something about the Golden Door Spa at The Boulders resort in Arizona that inspired confidence to try new things.    I was there on business – working on a project with the fabulous Michele Miller.    I was surprised at how much I thoroughly enjoyed The Boulders.  I came home rested and relaxed.  The same could not be said, however, for my credit card.  It is exhausted from over-exertion and in desperate need of some rest itself.  Last I saw it, it gave me a nasty look, said it had a headache and was heading to bed.  I do not think I’ll be charging anything again any time soon. 

So I was trying to figure out why I had such a positive experience at this place.  I’ve stayed in nice resorts before – why did this one stand out?   

More On How Men and Women Use the Internet Study

“Torture the numbers until they talk!” 

That’s a favorite saying of my colleagues Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg.   They’re referring to the fact that you can take research data and analyze and twist it every which way in order to get it to say what you want it to say.

I’ve found it really interesting to read the different takes on the Pew Internet Study about the differences between how men and women act online.

I found a particularly interesting article - How Gender Affects Search, Part 2 by Gord Hotchkiss.   Let me start by saying it's actually a really good article.  But I do have a few bones to pick.  He refers to the Pew Internet study and research done by his own group, Enquiro.  Gord points out that the Pew Internet study found that

“While men look at the Internet as a resource and a tool to accomplish a task, women use it as a communication channel.  Men appreciate the Internet’s ability to help them get the job at hand done.”   

Several articles claimed the same thing – but I really have to ask – was that really what you got from the research data? 

How Women and Men Use the Internet Study

Some people love to curl up with a favorite book.  Others get excited about sitting down to watch the hottest new movie.   I get giddy at the thought of escaping the world with….Internet research studies.   “Geek” is a term I’m not unfamiliar with. 

So you can imagine my excitement after downloading and printing off the latest report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project “How Women and Men Use the Internet.”    I’d read several articles about the report, but wanted to really dig into all the finer nuances.   I wanted to see if there were important points that were glossed over in the summaries of the research.  Indeed there were.   Here are some interesting findings:

• Young women are more likely to be online than young men, and black women have surged online in the last three years.  So - Want to reach younger women and minority women?   The Internet’s an increasingly good place to find them. 
• More parents are online.  People with children (parents) are online in larger numbers than people without children.  81% of men with children and 80% of women with children go online. So -Want to reach parents?  You better have a website. 
• 65% of men and 66% of women use the Internet at work.   So - Keep this in mind when you build your websites with flash and streaming video that launch automatically.  Imagine her horror when she lands on your website and before she can click out of your site or hit the volume button “Welcome to XYZ cosmetics where all your fantasies come true” or some other such sales message comes blaring from her computer, alerting every last one of her co-workers she is shopping online when she should be working.