Fear, hope and love

Seth Godin writes Fear, hope and love: the three marketing levers

The easiest way to build a brand is to sell fear. The best way, though, may be to deliver on hope while aiming for love...

Fifty is the Turning Point

Jean Paul Treguer, CEO of Senioragency International with headquarters in Paris is the 1st and only international marketing and advertising network dedicated to 50+ and senior consumers.

He has a blog in English from which the following

there is a succession of important events that occur around the age of 50 and which plainly change people’s lives. At 49, on average, women become grandmothers for the first time. Three years later, in general, they’re in the throes of the menopause and are telling their husbands it’s high time to stop smoking and to watch their diet. At fifty, the main mortgage is paid off, and at 52 their youngest children leave the nest. A few years later, their own parents will die. This sad news will often result in a sizeable inheritance (at 57, on average).  Over and above the strange terms used in marketing, then, everything clearly leads us to see 50 as a turning point – one that it is convenient to take as a starting point for a so-called ’seniors marketing’ strategy.
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Segmenting by Age in Marketing to Seniors

- the ‘Happy Boomers’ group (50 to 59-year olds)

- the ‘Liberation’ group (60 to 74-year olds)

- the ‘Peaceful’ group (75 to 84-year olds)

- the ‘Very Elderly’ group (85-year olds and over)

Health Vault

Microsoft  debuts a new web site Health Vault

The tagline Be well.  Protected.

Web site stores medical data privately.

Microsoft Corp. today introduced a Web site designed to enable people to manage and keep track of personal medical information while guaranteeing consumers' privacy.

Microsoft's HealthVault is a free site connected to a health-information search engine the company premiered last month. Users have access to a repository of health-related information and their medical histories, such as immunizations and records from doctor and hospital visits.

"Our focus is simple: to empower people to lead healthy lives," said Peter Neupert, corporate vice president of the Health Solutions Group at Microsoft.

The site targets both consumers and health care organizations, such as hospitals and insurance companies, some of which have been slow adopters of new health-information technology such as HealthVault. The goal of the Web site is to connect the entire health care system over the Internet.

Forget Girly Tech

A study of 750 British women between the ages of 24 and 45 showed that just 9 percent of women wanted products that "looked" feminine.  The other 91 percent were looking for something aptly described as "more boardroom than teenage bedroom."

Girly Tech No Woman Wants

Women's Web Thinking and Extraconnectedness

Michael Learned on Why Marketing to Women Requires an Holistic Approach

Not surprisingly, a woman’s more typically holistic buying characteristics are founded in the extra-connectedness of her brain. In fact, in comparison to a man’s brain, a woman’s brain typically has more connecting fibers between cells and a larger connecting tissue (corpus collusum)
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Noted socio-anthropologist Helen Fisher wrote in her book The First Sex: “As women make decisions, they weigh more variables, consider more options and outcomes, recall more points of view, and see more ways to proceed.” Fisher refers to women’s tendency to think in terms of interrelated factors (as opposed to men’s tendency to think more in a straight line or in steps) as “web thinking.”

As a result of web thinking, she says, women have easier access to both sides of the brain in any given decision, and are better able to integrate the emotional (does the community “feel” right?) with the rational (price, square footage, amenities, layout).

Booming Scrapbooks, It's a Good Thing

The Wall St Journal reports that Martha Stewart will soon roll out 650 products aimed at the scrapbooking market to be sold online and in partnership with Michael's Stores with 920 retail outlets in the U.S. and Canada.

Dowdy Craft Business Gets Martha Stewart Makeover

The scrapbooking market has grown from $350 million in 1998 to a $2.6 billion business in 2006.

Now you can get your MS designed cards & invitations, photo books and stickers.

"It's a good thing."

Martha Stewart Crafts
Martha Stewart Scrapbooking and Memory Keeping
Martha Stewart offers Archival CDs for backup on online photos

One fan writes
I went into Michaels in Langley B.C. Canada today and spotted the Martha Stewart scrapbooking supplies for the first time. I could not believe it! They are awesome! I love the colors and cant wait to attempt one of the oversized scrapbooks. they are all very classy and remind me of your beautiful Christmas ornaments. I know I will  be collecting it all. Please keep new stuff coming so everyone can enjoy!

Moms Turn to Blogs

Women, the principal audience for morning TV, are tuning out in increasing numbers in a Wake-up Call to A.M. News.

"Watching morning television for me is the equivalent of reading People magazine in the dentist's office," said Lauck, who writes for websites from her home in Santa Rosa, Calif. "They don't have anything new or particularly relevant to my life. It seems like a lot of fluff. I feel like I can get information faster and cleaner on the Internet."

They are turning the TV off and turning to  Mommy blogs  to swap tales about the pressures of modern motherhood.

"Now that I've been blogging, the morning shows feel like they're staged to me, whereas the mommy blogs are pretty authentic — to the point of being almost too honest some times," said Blecherman, a former senior manager at Deloitte & Touche who now does part-time consulting from home. "It's a way to get really fresh information from other moms, kind of like a virtual moms group. I don't see a need to watch the morning shows."

The Internet and Social Networks

The Latest Pew Study on The Strength of Internet Ties.

A new Pew Internet report done jointly with University of Toronto sociologists shows that the internet helps cultivate social networks and put them into action at times when people need help on important matters in their lives
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Disputing concerns that heavy use of the internet might diminish people’s social relations, the report finds that the internet fits seamlessly with Americans’ in-person and phone encounters. With the help of the internet, people are able to maintain active contact with sizable social networks, even though many of the people in those networks do not live close to them.
The report, “The Strength of Internet Ties,” highlights how email supplements, rather than replaces, the communication people have with others in their network.
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One major benefit comes when people want to mobilize their networks as they face problems or significant decisions. The Pew Internet Project survey finds that internet users are more likely than non-users to have been helped by those in their networks as they faced important events in their life.
“Internet use provides online Americans a path to resources, such as access to people who may have the right information to help deal with family health crises or find a new job,

Best and Worst Call Centers

From CRM Lowdown comes the 10 best and 10 worst companies for call center service.

Best
1-800-Flowers
General Electric
Citibank
IBM
Southwest Airlines
Direct TV
Verizon
Apple
Amex
Accenture

Worst
Dell
Comcast
AOL
Vonnage
Dish
Macy's
eBay
AT&T Wireless
Home Depot
Compaq

Of course you have to read the whole thing for the full snark.

Marketing to Introverts

Nedra Weinreich breaks the Introverts' Code of Silence and tells you how to market to introverts.

She points to this article by Jonathan Rauch on Caring for Your Introvert, the habits and needs of a little-understood group.

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

14 million women in one week

MyFamily.com made the most impressions on 14 million women in one  December week says the Center for Media Research.

Nellie's Shopping Trends 2006

Nellie Lide has another terrific shopping trends list for 2006, better than last years and full of examples and links.

1. Shopping for a Better World - Shopping as societal force.
2. Men come into their own as shoppers.
3. Celebrity Wannabe Shopping
4. Social Shopping
5. Shopping for Temporary Ownership

She's done all the research, gathered all the links, so take advantage and read the whole thing at the New Persuasion blog.

The rules change so quickly, we need all the help we can get.

Marketer Looks at 11 Trends

Via David Woldfe's Ageless Marketing comes a pointer to Eleven Trends from Tinderbox, a newsletter from the Hartman Group.

1) The Rise of Luxury Consumption Consumers from all walks of life are free - and willing - to explore levels of luxury heretofore reserved only for the most wealthy or elite peoples.
2) The Rise of the Experience Economy Consumers are less interested in fulfilling basic needs with products and much more interested in seeking fun and adventure through experiences.
3) Democratization of the Family Families are increasingly being run like democracies rather than fiefdoms, where each individuals wants and desires are accommodated despite their age or position.
4) Consumption Based Identities Increasingly, our identities are less the product of our family heritage and more a reflection of the assorted social networks we belong to - many of which are directly concerned with consumption.
5) Open Source & Creative Consuming Consumers have come to value consumption not as a means to an end (fulfilling needs), but as a source of productive activity worthy in its own right.
6) The New Empowerment Knowledge and authority are increasingly contested; they are viewed not as absolutes but as merely differing perspectives or interpretations.
7) The New Hedonism We have moved beyond the traditional (Puritan-based) belief that desirable outcomes must come from denial or abstinence.
8) Increasingly Fluid Tastes and Preferences Consumers no longer demonstrate a desire for consistency when it comes to choosing foods, beverages, clothes, etc.
9) Remixed Culture We are increasingly less likely to take things as face value but, instead, treat our culture - especially our consumer culture - as a source of irony, and playful commentary.
10) Firms of Endearment Cooperation is quickly managing to replace competition as the most critical marketplace value.
11) Consumption Driven Economy More than ever, consumers set the rules of engagement for the marketplace

Women who Launch get help

There's never been a better time for women to get funding for their small businesses.

There's Ladies Who Launch and many others listed in today's Wall Street Journal, The Money Game, Capital Ideas (subscribers only).

There has been a very large amount of progress in a relatively short period of time" for women-owned businesses expanding and obtaining funding, says Susan Sobbott, president of OPEN, American Express Co.'s small-business services division.

Women made up about 40%, or 10.4 million, of all small-business owners in the U.S. this year, according to the Center for Women's Business Research, an advocacy and research group in Washington. But only 3% of all female entrepreneurs owned small companies generating more than $1 million in yearly revenue, compared with 6% of all male entrepreneurs

Scrapbooking industry more than $2.5 billion

Women make general family albums and special albums as gifts on special occasions.  Scrapbooking is the third most popular craft hobby in the nation amounting to $2.55 billion in 2004, up 28% over 2001.

Here's the profile of scrapbookers from a survey conducted by Simple Scrapbooks magazine.

Thirty-nine percent of scrapbookers have been involved in the hobby for five years or more.

Scrapbook enthusiasts are most likely to be females between the ages of 30 and 50. Eighty-two percent have a college education and nearly 50 percent are employed full-time.

Scrapbooking expenditures have increased significantly over the last three years. Now, about 75 percent of scrapbookers spend at least $25 on supplies in a month. On average, scrapbook enthusiasts own scrapbooking supplies valued at approximately $1,853, an 81 percent increase since 2001.

About three-quarters of scrapbookers have a room or space in their home dedicated to the hobby.

Ivy League Moms

Are you an Ivy League Mom?

Ivy League moms, a heretofore unrecognized demographic niche  are now a $6 trillion market.

In a 102-page study released this May, Ekaterina Walsh of the Boston-based financial consulting firm Aite Group, defined a demographic group she refers to as "Ivy League Moms." They haven't all attended Ivy League schools, but they are highly educated and have left full-time careers to raise their kids, usually with the expectation of returning to their jobs after several years. In the meantime they want to work part-time and closer to home.

What makes this group so attractive is that they typically handle their own finances, or they share responsibility with their partner for developing the family's financial plans. In addition, they're firmly grounded in the mass-affluent, if not affluent, spectrum of investors. Walsh estimates that this group represents nearly 10 million households and $6 trillion in investable assets. In addition, they're well connected in their communities and consequently a rich source of potential referrals.

Wisdom on Search Advertising

Why search advertising is so important in today's Wall St Journal explained in today. Wisdom for the Web

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, a unit of New York-based Cendant Corp., calculates that it generates $14 in revenue for every $1 it spends on search advertising. Encouraged by such returns, the hotel company has increased its search ad spending by 500% since 2001

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Search advertising exceeded $5.1 billion in the U.S. last year and represented the largest category of Internet ads, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau trade group and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
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Search is "a great environment to build your business, there's no question," says Mr. Williams. "But it's an ever-changing environment and it demands appropriate attention."

Movies for Older Folk

What's this? Hollywood is finally catching on that a lot of would-be-moviegoers are 50, 60 and even 70 who, so far, have few movies they want to see.

Hollywood Awakens to the Geriatric Deomographic.

But where does that leave truly older audiences, fossils over 50 or 60 or even 70? To Hollywood these have been the perennially invisible men and women. Yet change is afoot. Some filmmakers and smaller distributors have discovered a secret society of mature moviegoers, and they have decided that this audience may actually be worth courting.
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Richard D. Zanuck, a veteran producer who is now 71, learned some lessons about the senior market 17 years ago when he and his wife, Lili Fini Zanuck, produced "Driving Miss Daisy" with Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman. No one wanted to finance it, but the movie went on to earn more than $100 million and won the Academy Award as best picture of 1989.

"After the movie succeeded," Mr. Zanuck recalled, "one executive told me that 'Driving Miss Daisy' was a 'nonrecurring phenomenon.' Millions of people went to the theater to see it. Why is that nonrecurring?"

Female Gym Rats

Athletic boutiques that cater exclusively to women are doing a bang-up business says Businessweek

FEMALE GYM RATS
Indeed, the target audience is growing. Participation in yoga rose 18% last year, to 14.7 million, the fastest growth rate among 19 activities surveyed by American Sports Data Inc. Women aged 25 to 40 are a target, but boomers are also driving the trend. According to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Assn., the latest numbers for gym membership among women aged 45 to 64 show a 51% rise between 2000 and 2004. That's showing up in sales of women's athletic apparel, which in 2004 totaled $4.9 billion, up 8.8% from 2002. According to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Assn., men's sales were flat.

Self Help Business

The self-help and actualization movement is now a $8.5 billion-a-year business.

Scientific American calls it the SHAM Scam and asks does it work? Of course, it focuses on the sillier new age stuff like firewalking and crystals, not on the serious attempts of people to make their lives better and to grow into higher, more evolved states of greater consciousness. Apparently since neither are measurable, they don't count to the author.

Stealth Army of Moms

Businessweek reports that Proctor & Gamble has enlisted a stealth army of 600,000 moms to chat up its products.

I sold it through the grapevine
P&G, the Cincinnati consumer-product giant is using personal endorsements to cut through advertising clutter. "We know that the most powerful form of marketing is an advocacy message from a trusted friend," says Steve Knox, Vocalpoint's CEO.
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P&G is the only such company to have developed its own in-house business units devoted to it, and it has the nation's largest legion of connectors. The effort started in 2001, when P&G launched Tremor, a word-of-mouth program also headed by Knox that is aimed at teens. Tremor now has enlisted 225,000 teens.
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P&G concentrates on finding women who have large social networks. Vocalpoint moms, who range in age from 28 to 45, generally speak to about 25 to 30 other women during the day, where an average mom speaks to just five.
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For one thing, they receive a steady stream of product samples. That's not all. They also get "a voice that is going to be heard by other companies," says Knox. Vocalpoint does this via a weekly e-mail newsletter it sends connectors called The Inside Track. A recent edition asks for the women's opinions on everything from the design of the newsletter itself to express mail options.

Secret Lives of Single Women

Nearly half of the women 45 or older in America are single, divorced or widowed, 25 million out of 57 million.

AARP recently did a survey of some 2500 women and found that American women are now more likely to spend more of their lives single than with a significant other.

Secret Lives of Single Women, i.e. the reality.

1. Open to a nice relationship, but not obsessed with having a partner.
2. Most single women enjoy their solitude
3. They are more timid investors but make fewer investing mistakes than men.
4. Many single women, particularly those under age 60 carry dangerously high debt.
5. Retirement is a great time to pursue their dreams and do what they always wanted to do.
6. They know appearances count, but don't go to extremes to look younger than they are.
7. Few lose sleep worrying about winding up alone with no partner to care for them late in life.
8. Unmarried women have strong family relationships, often stronger support systems than married women.
9. They have greater appetites for sustenance other than sex.
10. They are taking charge of their health.

Online Immortality

From Springwise's trendspotters, comes online immortality.

Life caching has just extended itself to eternity, overriding electronic space issues, hard drive failures and other technical glitches. For a one-time fee of USD 300/EUR 250, Eternity4all allows users to build a personal space using ten photographs, three one-minute movies and three texts, with the option to update as and when desired. Once a user makes his or her personal space public, it's published and saved on the company’s system for eternity.

Founded in March 2006 by Bert van Dam, Eternity4all aims to immortalize a user's uniqueness for the world, for his descendants and for himself. As Dam puts it, “The most beautiful aspect of Eternity4all is the process of telling your personal story and the awareness created while doing so.”

Ten pictures and three movies may seem too little for the average consumer to spend USD 300 on, but the whole idea behind this venture seems to extend beyond chronicling personal lives. Eternity4all will work as a time-capsule of sorts, encouraging consumers to choose what they would like to preserve for eternity. Considering how closely personal stories are tied to one's mother tongue and/or culture, local versions of this concept should work well. For a number of industries, partnering with Eternity4all could also tie in nicely with existing offerings; how about insurance companies offering customers a free slice of online immortality with every new life insurance policy?

Older, browner, more feminine

That there are no courses on demographics at Harvard Business School may explain why most executives are demographically dumb.

Yet you can't understand the future without demographics. Fast Company says the future is older, browner and more feminine than you might have realized in Demographics: The Population Hourglass

Maybe it's because

Demographers frequently come across like accountants--without all that sex appeal.
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Starting in the next decade, however, our flabby pyramid is quickly going to slim down. It will assume the form of an hourglass, with the largest number of older people in our society's history, the quasi-retired baby boomers, up top, and the largest generation of young people since the boomers--the millennials, or echo boomers--at the bottom. The beleaguered generation-Xers will form the "pinched waist" in the middle.
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The demographic concentration of boomers at the top of the population pyramid, backed by their vast reservoirs of disposable income, represents the next American gold rush.

Vital Radiance

Revlon now has a new line of products that middle-aged and older women - you know, the ones with all the money - will embrace.
And if the buzz continues like it has, they are going to have a great success and Revlon stock will be worth something.

Months ago, Crabby Old Lady wrote in Glitter and Gloss

“…Max, Estee, Christian, Elizabeth, Helena, Germaine, Pierre and all the rest who served her so well in her youth have forsaken Crabby in her dotage. Where is the foundation that covers nature's errors but doesn't cake in the lines? Eye shadow in matte colors of brown and gray without sparklies? Blusher and lip gloss that are brighter than Crabby's skin color, but not by much, and certainly not iridescent?

In the Radiant Elder Women , Crabby Old Lady raves about Vital Radiance in words that will make Revlon executives whoop and holler.

For the past week, Crabby Old Lady has been playing with this new line of cosmetics with as much enthusiasm as when she was a teenager experimenting with makeup for the first time. It’s the best girlie fun she’s had in ages.

What did they do right?

They listened. They made apparently great products that meet real needs. They didn't patronize with false promises. They marketed well.

And because of Crabby's endorsement and because I trust her, I'm going to buy me some. I probably would have ignored the magazine ads.

I'm thinking this is just the beginning of whole new ways of marketing to that sweetest of sweet spots, the middle-aged women. This is just Lipsticking good and smart marketing to women online because the women are talking themselves.

It's customers evangelizing what they see as awesome new product.

If Revlon takes the advice of Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba at Church of the Customer they will be tracking blogs so they can take the best advantage of such word of mouth.

The Beauty Market grows up.

The Beauty Market grows up. For Mature Audiences

Nice as it would be to believe that older women in high places (and a few enlightened men) are at last recognizing the allure of the post-Edenic Eve, that is, a woman with experience who knows what she wants and how to get it, some hard economics may also be wooing the cosmetic and fashion industries away from their long love affair with youth. M.A.C., whose edgy self-image seems made for the young, admits that almost a quarter of its customers are over 40. Dior reports that 65 percent of women using antiaging skin care are over 40 and that antiaging accounts for half of the company's total treatment business. What is more, expenditures of that mature age

It's changing the whole industry

Seems as the idea that your legacy is more than your money is taking off.

From the Chicago Tribune, Sharing Core Values Best Family Legacy

Estate planners are increasingly tapping emotions, and downplaying dollars, to start us thinking about leaving a legacy to our heirs.

Last month, the Financial Planning Association held an Internet seminar aimed at helping planners take their clients beyond boilerplate wills and trust documents.

In fact, financial planners are producing a movie to tell clients that there's more to life than money.

They're even bankrolling a movie -- and marketing a book -- to promote what the industry likes to call a cultural shift. The theme of the movie? Money is the least important thing you'll leave your heirs.
''It is ironic,'' said Rick Eldridge, producer of The Ultimate Gift, a $10 million independent film financed by a group of planners and promoted by the industry's biggest trade group. ``But it makes some sense if you think about it.''
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''Historically, planners have focused on the value of what their clients own,'' said Scott Fithian, a ''life planner'' with Legacy Cos. in Hingham, Mass. ``What they are beginning to recognize is that it's more important to focus on what their clients value. It's changing the whole industry.''

Searching for Ads of Interest

Everyone agrees that there are way too many ads. But when you are in the market for something, ads can be very useful. Now Tivo, the company that helped viewers skip commercials will soon help viewers find advertisements of interest. I think this is a promising development for better marketing to women and boomers.

TiVo Users Soon Can Search for Ads From the Wall St Journal (subscription only)

TiVo Inc. is partnering with several big ad firms to offer its users a system that lets them search for commercials centered around a specific topic. Expected to launch next spring, the feature comes as Madison Avenue is contemplating a number of ways to reach consumers who use technology to avoid traditional advertising.
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People who watch traditional television are forced to view commercials in random fashion, regardless of what they may be interested in buying, says Tom Rogers, TiVo's president and chief executive. "We're flipping the dynamic," he says, allowing TiVo subscribers to search for ads that match their interests.
TiVo users will be able to set up a profile of products on their television screens by clicking on categories such as automotive or travel or typing in keywords such as "BMW" or "cruises." On a regular basis, TiVo will then download relevant commercials to TiVo recorders over the Internet or, for those users who don't have broadband, send the video via traditional broadcast signals. The commercials will appear on-screen in a folder next to the list of television shows TiVo users record.
Advertisers, in turn, will be able to select the keywords and categories with which they wish to be associated for their ads. TiVo is in discussions with advertising agencies about the best way to price such advertising, but one option is to let advertisers bid on keywords as they do when buying ads on Internet search engines.
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Indeed, ad executives suggest advertisements will have to evolve in two ways. They will either need to generate enough buzz so that consumers are eager to find out more about them. Or they will need to become less filled with hype and offer more bare-bones information, much like Internet paid-search ads

Half of all women want to pack it all in

More than half of female workers have already left or are seriously considering escaping conventional nine-to-five working in a bid to invent their own working patterns, according to a new report.

They are instead preferring to follow a career path offering flexibility and professional autonomy rather than fit in with the demands of the corporate world.

This includes planning to set up their own businesses, retrain, work flexibly or pursue a "portfolio" career.

Perhaps most worrying for employers is the finding that almost three quarters of the female professionals polled said they were disappointed with their career progress to date.
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Geraldine Hetherington, chief operating officer at Hudson UK, said: "Many women have tasted corporate life and have decided there are better ways of making their mark on the world than following the traditional working model set before them.

"It's not just the demands of family life that are encouraging women to reject working conventions in favour of their own methods; in order to have more control over where, when and how they work, they are setting up their own businesses, retraining or pursuing a 'portfolio' career," she added.

I'm not surprised at all.

Women make 75% of all travel decisions

Women make 75% of all travel decisions (for their families, their businesses and themselves) as well as making up 43% of all business travelers reports Marti Barletta in Ad Age.

Hotels and destinations are beginning to take note. Those that don't are missing out the very people who make the arrangements for vacations, weddings and anniversaries for groups of family and friends.

Housewives or Mousewives

Women have so integrated the Internet into their families' lives, it's become another domestic appliance according to a recent study that shows 'Mousewives' drive the Net revolution.

It shows that half of all women who go online have moved the home PC into the living room so it can play a central role in family life.

Two-thirds of women now research their families' health online, it says, while one third have replaced Watch with Mother with Surf with Mother as they accompany their children online to do homework or play.

Women with a computer in the household also turn out to be 'all-hours' users, with half logging on before breakfast and a fifth getting up in the middle of the night to access the internet. The main reasons cited are that the PC is becoming the social hub for gossip with family and friends as well as a means of bargain hunting, without leaving the living room.

Punishment has also changed, the research has found. Removing internet privileges for children is becoming commonplace as e-grounding replaces more traditional chastisements for bad behaviour.

Hiding in Plain Sight

They're beginning to find us!   

The Gap, the largest clothing store in the nation, introduced a new chain yesterday called Forth & Towne.

The New York Times says it's aimed at 

that unwieldy and indefinable category known as grown-ups.

Why?  It's where the money is.

Baby boomers spent $42.7 billion on apparel last year, compared with teenagers who spent $20 billion.

BlogHer Con -

This is the start of Blogher live blogging.  I've got my coffee, the room is packed and a video Sheryl Crow is playing on the big screen. Now it's Tina Turner, 63 and looking  great.

A long jam-packed day means an early start.  Attention to detail highlights:

• good breakfast, lots of fruit,  small sized muffins, bagels already.
• wireless throughout the lobby and the entire tech center provided by Google
• good looking and skinny folders with all the information we need and no more
• lots of small tables for small groups to talk
• the variety of women from around the country is astounding - a punk rocker next to a middle-aged marketing professional behind a fashion model behind a mommy blogger, in front of the techie, with a lawyer on the side.
• Best tote bags ever from Google
• power strips everywhere

The four co-mothers of the conference, Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort, Jory des Jardins and Katrin Verclas.  Congrats to all of them for all their good, hard work in record time.

Lisa Stone begins
Taking women blogging to a whole new level, pushing way past where are the women bloggers. 
We know 43-56% of all bloggers are women
At the closing session, we'll create the mother of all to-do lists
Three questions we'll be asking

• what have you learned
• what will you do with this information
• what would you tell other women not here

She thanks all the women who came and showed up. She  thanks the sponsors.

Elisa Camahort, reports on the survey.  Jory on the guidelines.
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Next up
Halley Suitt and Charlene Li debate "Playing by the Rules"

Lisa Stone say  women bloggers are not showing up in the search results.  They're not on the top 100 bloggers on the Technorati lsit.

Charlene Li, from Forrester.  There is a game out there, characterized by the 80/20 rule.  Some of us want to be on the A list, others blog for their own personal satisfaction.  You have to play by the rules .

Haley: Wasn't blogging begun so as not to play by the rules.  Weren't the personal stories told by Jeff Jarvis and others influential in changing even the New York Times to

Charlene Li 's rules
1. Be good at networking

We're not as good at networking as the men are.

• Tell people what you can give.
• Ask people for what you need.

Haley says ask for links.  ASK.  Women don't ask.  ASK again.  ASK the third time.
2. Be relevant
3. Be unique

Will men only link to other men?  Do you have to write about politics?  Who cares about the Technorati 100? Don't we have all have our own A list?

Audience says it's key words and search and you can always find the blogs who write on the subject.

Another says traffic is not an end in itself, your goal is.  Think about what you want to achieve, traffic is just the means to get there.

Dina another become credible in what you care about.  She gives her example of a citizens group in Texas fighting an attempt by local phone companies to ban broadband.

A female tech CEO says its your own sphere of influence that counts.  Let's come up with a new metric that measures female bloggers - a new code.

Another Everyday Goddess:  let's have more versions of the lists.

Another: join up in networks for woman bloggers

Complaints about Technorati's reliability in posting all the posts tagged Blogher.

Mary Hodder who once worked at Technorati, is working on a community algorhythm that looks at more than inbound links. 

Miriam, who speaks five languages, can write in only one - even though she writes primarily about Africa and Asia and people of color.

Mena Trott, President of Six Apart

Live Journal 72% women and under 21
Typepad about 50/50 women, men.

She says she, Meg (founder of Blogger), Katherine of Flick'r are often dismissed, sometimes by other women

Mark:  Empower yourselves, all these companies have open APIs, create your own BlogHer 100.

Amber, a teen blogger says send postcards, offline means work too.

Summary
Halley.  Blog-whoring  - isn't that a female derogatory term.  Let's not use it.
Charlene,  Ask for links when it's relevant
Halley.  Push the medium.  Start your own companies. 

Technorati Tags: BlogHer, Bloghercon

When WOM becomes WOW

Fascinating predictions on the future of marketing by Jonathan Carson after the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Conference.

1. Money will be spent syndicating and placing brand relevant content at different points all over the Internet instead of building a perfect website.

2. Use of holistic online environments to manage content we create,  purchase and the people we share it with.

3. Fewer celebrity endorsements, more sponsorships on consumer-created sites and more customer-helping-customer services, think Tupperware parties.

4. Media planners who can track, buy and plan media will be the new stars eclipsing the ad agency creatives.

5. More direct marketing and tracking of what happens to a brand message.

We'll see how these pan out as more and more companies try to figure out how to get more word of mouth.  Look for WOM to become WOW

Kodak gets it

The Wall St Journal today, Kodak sharpens digital focus on its best customers: women (subscription only)

Says Chairman Daniel Carp, "Throughout history, women have been the keepers of family memories."

Touchy-Feely

Yvonne DiVita whose engaging blog about marketing to women online never fails to enlighten, amuse and instruct, in  her musings on marketing links to a wonderful post by Mary Hunt at Attract-Her.  (I'm also delighted that she liked Twisting the Lion's Tail.)

Provena St Mary's Hospital in Kankakee, Illinois, has found a sure fire way to attract moms to their birthing center.  They've hired  photojournalist Bill Jurevich to capture the moment when a newborn first goes eye to eye with their family.  That magic moment is captured on DVD and given to every new mom.  Of course, they love it and they tell their friends and the hospital benefits in that halo. They are part of that beautiful  "touchy-feely" personal moment.

It's called experiential marketing, creating bonds with customers through the sharing of our human experience.
It's the touchy-feely stuff that connects women --- and men too. 

Just because it can't be measured easily, doesn't mean it doesn't work.  After all, you can't measure beauty, truth, goodness, friendship or love either and they are the things we most value in life. 

One of the many wonderful things about the Web is that it allows companies to be more human, more personal by engaging in many different conversations, by listening to many different voices.    What after all are markets but conversations in human voices, "open, natural and uncontrived" asks Cluetrain

"We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers.  We are human beings - and our reach exceeds your grasp.  Deal with it."  The Cluetrain Manifesto
 
Before anything, we are human and it's what's most human about us, the mystery of our very lives,  that binds us together.  With everything becoming commoditized, it's the touchy-feely stuff that counts.

Taking Care of Personal Business

The best small and medium companies make it easy for their employees to take care of more than business.

Those companies understand how complex our lives are.  We do some of a personal business at work and we work at home.  They treat people like the human assets they are, trust them to meet corporate goals and make it easier for them to do so, by making their personal lives easier.

The result much happier employees, far less turnover and employees working at their highest level.

Hats off to the 50 top small and medium companies to work for.

Successful Baboons

As boomers grow older, we can expect more research and information on successful aging and  The Wall Street Journal has already begun with its Journal Report on The Secrets of Successful Aging.

It may surprise you to learn that aging is about a body that doesn't deal well with stress anymore says Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford University neuroendrocrinologist and leading stress researcher.

How well we deal with stress is one of the most significant factors for predicting how well we age.  People who deal well with stress tend to have a lot of social support.

Successful agers are not loners. People who age well tend to be close to extended family and have a strong network of friends and social relationships. Marriage in particular protects men from the perils of aging. (Among women, it doesn't seem to matter if they are married or not, as long as they have other close relationships.)
-----
In primate studies, relationships also make a difference in the quality of old age. "One of the crappiest positions you can get late in life is to be an old baboon in a troupe where you were once a young baboon," says Dr. Sapolsky of Stanford. The reason: Baboons, particularly high-ranking ones, spend their lives terrorizing those with lower rankings. But rankings slide. Powerful baboons get old, and the young baboons they once terrorized eventually end up in a position to get revenge.

But there is one subset of male baboons that escapes the stress of old age. These are the animals that spent their middle age establishing close relationships with the females in the troupe. Late in life, these baboons get harassed just as much as any other baboon, but they stick around anyway, because they've got a network of nice, female baboons that keep them company, groom them and generally act as a buffer against what would otherwise be a miserable life.

"Connectedness in old age is enormously important," Dr. Sapolsky says.

In sum, be nice to the women in your life and blog.  No better way to stay connected and grow old successfully.

Chasing What's Inside of Myself

" Women often discover their business talent after kids are raised" is the piece by Carol Hymowitz in today's Wall St. Journal.

Here are some highlights.

"Being a leader requires dedication and a single-minded focus, which women often aren't able to have until later in life," says Laura ---Liswood, a senior adviser to Goldman Sachs and the general secretary of the Council of Women World Leaders.
------
In addition, it often takes women longer to believe in themselves enough to seek jobs in which they wield power. "By their 40s and 50s, after observing a few male bosses, women finally begin to say to themselves, 'These guys aren't any smarter than I am."
----
A lot of middle-age women have found their own solution: launching their own businesses. There are 10.6 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., employing 19.1 million people, and two out of three of the new businesses being launched are women-owned. "A lot of these women have worked for big corporations, but at 40 or so when a lot are still stuck in middle management they start thinking, 'I can have more influence and a bigger piece of the pie doing it on my own,' " says Marsha Firestone, founder of the Women Presidents' Organization. The average age of the group's members is 49.

But by far the best quote is from Bonni Lonsbury, founder of Touch Today, a  Denver-based marketing firm.

She focused on raising two sons in her 20s and early 30s. She worked, too, but her husband's sales career required the family to move five times in 14 years. When she applied for a joint law and M.B.A. program, she says, she worried "I wasn't bright enough to get in." But she was among the top in her class and quickly landed a clerkship.
Ms. Lonnsburry decided not to pursue a law career. "I did it to have something to say at cocktail parties," she says. Then, in her late 30s, she suffered a string of losses: Both her parents died, her marriage dissolved and, for a time, her sons went to live with their father.
"I had no money, no job, no family," she says. "But I started confronting everything about myself, and I decided I can't feel afraid anymore, I'm going to feel joy, I'm going to feel prosperous and I'm not wasting another minute."
---
What she enjoys most is creating useful products for customers. "When I was young, I felt I had to be perfect in every way," she says. "But I'm no longer chasing after what others might want of me. I'm chasing what's inside of myself."

"Chasing what's inside of myself" is what middle-aged women do to find new meaning and purpose in their lives.  Companies who want to go after the richest market in America - middle-aged women - must pay attention to what women want.

A Woman's Web

From eMarketer via Yvonne at Lipsticking.

While the ratio of females to males in the general population is expected to hold steady through 2009, that won't be the case on the Internet," says Ms. Williamson. "Cultural, societal and Internet business trends are combining to shift the balance toward women. Because of these factors, eMarketer projects that the female majority online will become more pronounced over the next five years — and that will have a transformative effect on content, commerce and marketing."

"The Internet allows women to get more done in a shorter time; shop, plan trips, look for homes. And it also gives them another way to communicate besides the phone," says Mary Hunt, New Media Catalyst, Interpret-Her. "The Internet allows women to be social and pro-active at the same time."

Ms. Williamson adds, "The rising influence of females online is something that can't be ignored".

As the female influence grows across the Internet, companies will need to use techniques that appeal to females, including word of mouth marketing, e-mail and relationship-building.

Unmet Needs or Making Women Smile

Some people are just naturals when it comes to understanding and marketing to women.  Take this guy Bill, a natural.  And you can tell by his 28 ways to make a girl smile.

So is Jory des Jardins at Pause.  She writes about the recent Marketing to Women conference

Those whose livelihoods depend on marketing to women are fairly screwed; imagine resting your career on an ever-shifting market. The opening presentation, given by Frank About Women, asserted that demo targeting is a no-no when marketing to women. Afterall, who is, say, the typical mother of a small child? Today, she's in her teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or older if she's the primary caretaker of a grandchild. She's got a husband, or no husband, or maybe a wife. She spends her husband's money, or she spends her money on her husband. She floats between monikers of stay-at-home Mom, career woman, desperate housewife, DIY home renovator. Whoever she is, she prefers that you provide her with a solution, not a lifestyle option--she's already made her choices there, thank you.

I was comforted to know that Superwoman has been killed off; products will do well that don't promise to help women do it all. Good marketing must acknowledge the parts of her life that CAN be salvaged. Calgon sort of did that eons ago, but today there's less of a Sylvia Plath-like response to the competing pressures of career and domestic responsibility. Nor do women relate to themselves by job title. Over lunch I met the CEO of a multi-million-dollar company. She introduced herself as an entrepreneur.

I know, understanding women is a tall order, but I want to help. I'll start by telling you what I want, or what I think I want, as the sad story for women like me is we often know more about what we don't want. Here are some of my "touchpoints," mundane opportunities that marketers can exploit to make me a customer for life. Do with them what you will:

To read her touchpoints, go here. 

Don't miss her takedown of the Bank of America and their terrible practice of charging small businesses to deposit checks via ATM in Banks: a notoriously inhospitable industry.  Now Jory is a prominent woman blogger who writes engagingly on "working without a net" which is what she calls self-employment. 

She also is one of the organizers of the Blogher conference for woman bloggers on July 30.  Her story has and will travel widely in the blogosphere, among people who connect to each other to share stories and help each other live better lives.  How many people won't set up accounts at Bank of America because of Jory's story and the discussion in her comments.  If banks will pay $300-$500 for a new account, how much have they lost because of Jory's post.

Does anyone at Bank of America keep track of what bloggers are saying about them on the world wide web? If they did, they would be making changes more quickly then they are.    When the richest source of new accounts is new businesses by middle-aged men and women, why do banks make it so hard for the self-employed?  Why aren't they reaching out to the self-employed, figuring out what they need, and creating local support networks to attract new customers?

Shoshanna Zuboff writes in "The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism" (Shoshana Zuboff, James Maxmin) that economic value is distributed in the unmet needs of individuals. She also writes that history teaches us that those enterprises that move decisively to reconnect with an alienated population get rich first. 

What about it Bank of America? Why don't you make your self-employed women smile?

Internet and Social Capital

David Weinberger has a good summary of Lee Rainie's talk  (of  the Pew Internet & American Life Project) at the Freedom to Connect Conference organized by David Isenberg

People who use the Internet "grow their social capital." People (especially women) use email to enhance their social networks. 84% of Internet users belong to online groups — that's 115M people.

Do Women Read Blogs

A lot has been made about the Blogads survey that showed 75% of the people reading blogs, albeit in a small, selected subset were men and the survey itself was not a scientific sample.  The survey was not a scientific one.

Couple that with a recent study by PR firm Ketchum that showed among other things

• women aged 25-54 have much more on their minds today than five years ago and little time to hear commercial messages
• they are more stressed than men, or any other group
• they are more likely to feel distracted and "pulled" in different directions
• 74% spend more time thinking about others' needs, than their own
• 59% rarely or never read a newspaper; 56% said the same for magazines

It seems as if they trust their family and friends (26%) just about as much as they trust experts (27%)

“What the survey makes very clear is that women ages 25 to 54 are ‘multi-minding’ today – they’re constantly physically and mentally juggling those multiple facets of their complex lives,” maintains Kelley Skoloda, Director of Ketchum’s Global Brand Marketing Practice.

Yet they shop online more than men (52%) and while they don't buy as many big ticket items, look to see the volume and variety of what they buy online to increase as they look to save time using the Internet as their vehicle of choice. 

Sounds like a natural way to market to these women is through blogs that connect women to each other, that connect family and friends in a personal web of trust, that encourage conversations and aren't focused on just selling but sharing and support. 

These are just some of the blogs written by women that I read on a regular basis.
Dooce.and Halley's Comment and Testosterhome and Seedlings & Sprouts and My Mom's Blog,  The Dawn Patrol and The Open Book and Time Goes By and The Anchoress and La Shawn Barber and Sandee and The Sheila Variations

Some are married, some parents,  others single;  some religious, others not, one fighting cancer, one the oldest blogger on the Internet, others young, some political, others not.    What they have in common is a distinctive voice that brings me back wanting to read more, wanting to find out what they are thinking about, wanting to learn what happened next.    We learn from the experiences of our friends and increasingly from the experiences of other bloggers we likely have never met.

My personal expert in marketing to women online and she should be yours is Yvonne DiVita at Lipsticking.  Listen in while she interviews Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing and they talk about women reading blogs (many more than you think), and some great tips for businesses to attract more women and not just through blogs.

She-Blogger

Men, good hunters and scouts,  were the first to adopt computers and venture onto the World Wide Web.  They still dominate the blogosphere when it comes to politics and technology as the Blog Ads survey revealed.  Just as it took a few years for women to overtake men in terms of using the Internet, it will likely take a few years until the prominent bloggers are just as likely to be women as men.  And then who knows what it will look like.  Here's one peek into the future.  Return of the She-Blogger

    and

HT American Digest  When Women Rule the Blogs.

Ladies Banking

Okay, so they don't let women drive or vote, but the Saudis do allow women to control their own money.  Still I was gobsmacked to learn that Banque Saudi Farsi is breaking all tradition to advertise on TV and in print.  their "Ladies Banking"

Eric Phanner has the story in the New York Times

"You have your dreams. You have your ambitions," a voice-over says in Arabic. "You are not alone," it continues. "With you is Banque Saudi Fransi."
....
A similar print ad uses a simple image of a woman silhouetted against a fiery sky. Jean-Francois Benazet, a marketing manager with the bank, said Saudi women "need to know the bank will be a friend and help them through life stages."
....
As the account executive said, "If you can show women, you will look especially at their needs, you can do a lot of business."

Over 50 -Look to life stage, not age

"Age isn't a useful indicator anymore, life stage is, " says Matt Thornhill, who runs The Boomer Project, a research and consulting company, based in Richmond, VA. 

For a fascinating look at how life stage not age works in marketing, take a look at Legacy Account.  This ad was tested against a age-based, factual ad by the Boomer Project.  No surprise that this ad worked far better not just for boomers but for younger consumers as well.  The conclusion: "To attract more boomers, focus on life-stage, not age. Use emotionally-meaningful concepts, pictures and words.  And communicate your facts wrapped in a story"

More gleanings from Thornhill by Jennifer Wells who wonders  - is anybody marketing to me? 

• A third have survived a major illness.
• A third have changed their diet due to a medical condition.
• They will outspend younger adults by $1 trillion (U.S.) annually by the year 2010.
• They are not brand loyal.
• They crave new experiences. They are not set in their ways.
• When the time comes, they want to "age in place" — none of that moving-to-Florida business.
• They grade marketers at a "Low D" in attempts to market to boomers.
• They see themselves as 12 years younger than they are.
• They cleave to the idea of life-long learning.
• Retirement?  Not in the cards.

As for the boomer women

• She wants to give back and live richly, and that doesn't mean money. It means experience.
• She's becoming more masculine.  Now that the kids are out of the house, carpentry or a new career beckons.

Best example of a company that gets it.  Eileen Fisher, my favorite designer incidentally, who  believes 'Every Body is Beautiful'.  Fortune calls her "The Nurturer" and one of its Best Bosses.    Fisher is keyed into boomers: "I think I give people the freedom to find themselves, to find their own path, to find their own way there."

It works!  Eileen Fisher revenues are up 12% to $144 million at the same time overall sales for women's apparel have gone down 6%.  Her retail turnover of employees is 19% compared to the industry average of 50.7%.  She has great benefits for her employees and is only one of 3 US companies to comply with a strict set of workplace standards administered by the non-profit and international watchdog group  called Social Accountability International according to Fortune.

The New Mind of the Market

People 40 and over number 130 million.  People 18-39 number 85 million.  No one does a better job of  explaining how middle age and older people are changing the mind of the market and in many ways making traditional marketing obsolete than David Wolfe, co-author of Ageless Market, one of my recommended books over there on the right. 

What makes him such a fascinating read is the way in which he weaves brain science and psychology, the foundation of his thinking, into his observations of the market and the practice of marketing.

Over the past month, Wolfe has detailed the 8 ways an aging population is changing the mind of the market or what some would call the collective unconscious.  It's the best way to understand quickly what tectonic changes we will be seeing as the marketers are forced to deal with the new mind of the market.  I'm going to summarize them below with links to each post.

#1 They are more realistic and practical.  The familiar is often more attention getting than 'What was that all about' novelty.

#2 Perceptions are more dependent on context. Researchers have found that older people are more difficult to predict because contextual influences are infinite in number. Older people appreciate ambiguity and nuance. They trust authorities less and their own experience more.

#3 Detached, more individuated.  The true self only emerges with the passing of 'youthhood'.
Individualized attention becomes more critical to establishing and preserving loyalty. 

Here I have to put in one of my favorite quotes, by, of all people, Agatha Christie

As life goes on it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself every day. This is sometimes disconcerting for those around you, but a great relief to the person concerned.

#4 Increased resistance to persuasion.   Older people are less brand loyal according to Roper surveys.  Price doesn't matter as much as qualitative superiority in both product and customer experience.  More experienced, they are savvier consumers.

#5 Older consumers are more emotional, intuitive in decision-making.  With greater life experience comes more 'thinking without thinking', the very phenomenon Malcolm Gladwell explores in his new book, Blink.

#6 Older consumers more often focus on the customer experience than the product.  Desires are less materialistic, more experiential with pleasure sought in little things.  It's not the getting, influencing, possessing and controlling that moves older people, it's the desire to find what's important, what one's life is all about, what Victor Frankl wrote about as Man's Search for Meaning.  Oftentimes it is the unlived parts of one's life that demands attention in middle age.  Discovery of meaning comes through new experiences,  often through travel or a change in focus or career.

The new 20 years in mid-life allows the empty nester to seek the adventure and change that she wants.
Othertimes, it's a traumatic event in one's life that begins a reassessment.  By age 54, most women (53%) have suffered a trauma within the prior 12 months having to do with family, job or personal health according to the General Social Survey.

#7 More introspective.  More self-informed, more trust in self.  Self-Realization changes what it takes to succeed in marketing.  To be all that we can be, to fulfill our highest potential, to become self-actualized in the words of Abraham Maslow, is the call of the second half of life.  It's not an easy path, it can take years of introspection. Many chose not to take it, but many more, more than ever in history are choosing it.

#8 More authentic    Humility over hubris, less tolerant of puffery, prefer reality to unrealistic idealism.  By middle age, we know we will never have the perfect body, the perfect hair, the ideal job or spouse, and it doesn't much matter anymore.  The urge to strut is replaced by the urge to be real, to deal with what we have in the best way we can.  Idealism is OUT, Realism is IN

Red Hat Society

Disorganized and fun, the Red Hat Society of middle-aged women is making a lot of people sit up and take notice, like the Executive Update Online where they made the cover in the Rise of a Dis-Organization.

The small group of women aged 50 and older decided to greet middle age with a no-rules verve, and their enthusiasm was contagious. Today, that circle of friends has evolved into a staggering 35,000 chapters of nearly one million women around the world — and growing. Members wearing red hats and purple clothing get together for tea, pajama parties, roller skating, spa nights, card games, parades, and motorcycle rides, among other uplifting activities....

And talk about organizational credibility. The uniquely disorganized sisterhood is spreading so fast that physicians actually are prescribing the Red Hat Society to patients to improve their physical and mental health, and educators at Pennsylvania State University are studying the positive health connection between the Red Hat Society and the aging process.

Why Women will rule

Via Tom Peters,  the only big company with over 50% women on its board of directors is Albertson's, next is Wells Fargo with 35.7 % women on its board.  Tom quotes Alberston's CEO Larry Johnston,

Women have insights into our customers that no man—no matter how bright, no matter how hard working&mdashcan match. That's important when 85 percent of all consumer buying decisions made in our stores are made by women." Retail analyst Burt Flickinger calls the absence of women in top slots, pre-Johnston, the company's "tragic flaw." He adds, "It was a bunch of old white guys making erroneous assumptions and erroneous conclusions about women and the multicultural consumers that make up the majority of Albertson's customers." All this still doesn't make it a cakewalk to go toe-to-toe with Wal*Mart in groceries, but it helps!

Tom is one of the best evangelists for marketing to women around, especially boomer women.  His powerpoint slides can be downloaded by anyone to learn who he listens to and the statistics he quotes like these.

From 1970-1998 median income

men's median income increased by 0.6%
women's median income increased by 63%

Women have great business purchasing power

They are 51% of all purchasing managers and agents
They are more than 50% of human resource managers
They are more than 50% of administrative officers

Women-owned businesses

In the United States, women-owned businesses employ more than the Fortune 500 companies do world-wide.

All sources are from Martha Barletta, Marketing to Women  which you can see right over there on the right