Ms. Adverthinker

Love this “Know Your Girls” video. Thank you, Yoplait.

Dell decided to target women with a section within their website dedicated to their computer needs: Della.  When the site originally launched, according to this NY Times blog entry, it “featured tech ‘tips’ that recommended calorie counting, finding recipes and watching cooking videos as ways for women to get the most from a laptop.”  Wow, did they look up female stereotypes and plug in everything that fell into that category?  I am surprised that a brand as large (and as experienced with customer service issues) as Dell can make a gaffe like this when targeting women.  To think that women only need a computer for diet tips and recipes is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard.  Women revolted:

“But the approach may have done more harm than good: A backlash erupted online, as both women and men described the Web site as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘gimmicky’ and, as one disgruntled Facebook member wrote on Dell’s Facebook page, ‘Lamest move ever!’

The resounding blowback prompted the company to amend the Web site, along with a note that stated, ‘Some of you have read this article over the last several days & will notice a few modifications. You spoke, we listened. Thank you for your ongoing feedback.’”

I didn’t see the site when it originally launched, but I think that it does a nice job of selling the product features and benefits now, without being too girly.  By far, the smartest thing included on the site is a section on giving.  With the purchase of Promise Pink netbook or PC, Dell gives a portion of the proceeds to the Komen Foundation.  And, there is information on how to recycle old/unwanted technology.   I can’t put my fingers on the statistic right now, but I have seen statistics that brands willing to give money/goods for products purchased are more likely to get a woman’s money.

Dell saved themselves by listening to consumer feedback and immediately making changes to the site.  They deserve kudos for that.  But really, they shouldn’t have made such a mistake with the site launch.

For those who still want to argue against the influence of women on the future and their impact online, check this out :

“…42 million women in the United States (roughly 53% of the 79 million adult women in the United States who use the Internet) participate in social media at least weekly. As they spend more time with social media, women are spending correspondingly less time with traditional media: 39% less on newspapers, 36% less time reading magazines, and 30% less time watching TV.” (source)

…

“The women who post to blogs are the most actively engaged. They spend the most time online. Over 80% also participate in social networks like Facebook, and over one third of bloggers also participate in Twitter. But more to the point, those who blog are more likely to be tech savvy, on the leading edge of trends, and invest time searching for new products online.” (source)

These stats are the result of a survey conducted by Blogher in March 2009.  We already know that more women are online than men.  And now we know how engaged they are in the online space and how influential they can be on each other: women reported that they are significantly more likely to make a purchase decision based on customer experiences reported on blogs.  They are relying on blogs for information on politics and news, technology/gadgets, cars and business/career/personal finance.  They are relying on their social networks for social activism, sex/relationship/dating, entertainment and shopping.

Any marketer targeting women should be leveraging the influence of blogs and social networks to communicate brand and product messages, as well as news and information.

• Provide a forum for these women to speak to each other and to you about the brand/products/news.
• Communicate back and worth with these women.
• Reach out to them in their world.  Show that you are paying attention and that you care what they have to say.  Ask for their opinions.
• Monitor what they are saying and address issues and concerns.  Or reward them if they are brand ambassadors.

An interesting video about the ways marketing has changed.

The talk about Twitter right now is abundant.  It seems that it has finally reached the masses and people (and companies) are starting to get more interested in it.  The Wall Street Journal has even written about it.  I signed up for Twitter about a year ago and write my own tweets pretty intermittently – some days I am very active, other days nothing (you can see my latest Twitter posts in the right-hand column on this blog).  However, I keep Twhirl open on my desktop every day and track many people and news organizations.  I am addicted to getting that feed directly to my desktop all day long.

It is an interesting social phenomenon: humans have always been curious about other people’s lives and thoughts, and now people actually want to openly share their lives and have found a way to deliver those straight to your desktop or cell phone instantly.  I am amazed at how open our lives have become, including mine.  I have always been a private person, but now I am sharing everything online and am having fun doing it.  Part of me feels like I have to do it out of fairness: I love reading everyone’s else’s information and I feel too voyeuristic if I am not sharing my own.

(If you love reading about people’s lives and don’t mind feeling voyeuristic, check out PostSecrets: “an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.”  I am also addicted to this site.  Some of the secrets are funny, some are scary and many are sad.  I think this site has a interesting way of making people feel not so alone in the world.  It is also a cool mash-up of traditional communication (mail) with online communication (blog).  It reminds me of a more anonymous Twitter.)

For now, Twitter seems to be best for communicating up-to-the-second news updates and keeping up with your friends.  I am interested to see how companies will use it to communicate with their customers and if customers will actually “follow” companies through Twitter.  How Twitter will be used as a direct marketing tool has not fully been determined yet.  Marketers can (and should) be using Twitter to better understand their customers and their perceptions of brands/companies; we should think of it as an online focus group.  Through the Twitter search feature, we can plug in company names and see what people are saying about us and our clients.

A new Twitter project that I love is My First Tweet.  This was created by Noah Brier of Brand Tags-fame (I am jealous of his ingenuity when it comes to things like this).  My First Tweet is a database of people’s first words on Twitter.  He calls it “an anthropological dig on Twitter.”  Love this.

For those in Arkansas: Thank you to Lance Turner of Arkansas Business for the shout out on his blog as a local Twitter-er.  Check out what Lance says about Twitter here.  Blake Rutherford also recently wrote about his use of Twitter: see his comments at Blake’s Think Tank and follow Blake’s political commentary on Twitter.

You can follow me on Twitter here.

My dog Betty is the center of my world.  To me, she is a person–she has all the personality of a human, she is the size of a human (96 pounds) and she talks to me.  And, yes, I talk to her.  We have a relationship.  Last week I had a conversation with a client over lunch about the love we have for our dogs and their importance in our lives.  She told me a story about taking her dog to the Baskin-Robbins drive through to a cup of vanilla ice cream as a treat.  The dog knows the words “ice cream” and will behave if promised ice cream.  The dog recognizes the drive through and the girls who work the drive through recognize her.  I love this story and can picture the dog’s excitement as she is presented with her “treat” and gets brain freeze shortly thereafter.  Wouldn’t it be great if Baskin-Robbins included a menu item specifically for dogs?  I have actually heard of one of our local frozen treat shops doing such a thing.

It makes sense for brands to cater to dogs and their owners: there are between 40-50 million dog owners in the United States.  Ad Age is thinking the same thing:

“The pet market, I don’t need to tell you, is huge. Pet lovers will lavish more than $43 billion on their animal companions this year. Such devotion leads me to believe that non-pet marketers who can figure out a way to tap into all that pampering (The Wall Street Journal reported that formerly “bare bones” kennels have transformed themselves into posh daycare services that offer doggie massages and other amenities) will earn the undying loyalty of pet owners.”

The article goes on to suggest that fast food restaurants, like McDonald’s should offer “doggie meals”:

“McDonald’s already offers the Happy Meal for kids, so why not bring out the Doggie Meal for dogs (or, as Merrilee suggested, the Yappy Meal)? It would consist of a small water bottle, a plastic bowl, a snack portion of dog food (or a meal portion if you’re on a long trip) plus a stuffed toy with the McDonald’s logo. And if the McDog idea caught on and the dog-lover market proved to be as responsive as I think would, the bigger McDonald’s outlets, those with play areas for kids, could also provide play areas for dogs.”

Brilliant.

As I am reading my latest issue of Wired, I learned the name of condition that I was already familiar with:

Homophily – the human tendency to seek out information that supports preexisting assumptions.

And, according to Wired, the internet “magnifies this echo-chamber effect.”  So, whether your beliefs are right or wrong, you can find a web resource that supports your beliefs and validates whatever argument you are having.

Makes sense.  This “condition” aligns with “niching” trend that is facilitated by the internet.  With a sense of individualism, people are making choices based on their own needs rather than following the masses around them.  To quote the book Microtrends,

“No matter how offbeat their choices, they can now find 100,000 people or more who share their taste for deep fried yak on a stick.

…the Internet has made it so easy to link people together.  In the past, it was almost impossible to market to small groups who were spread around the county. Now it’s a virtual piece of cake to find 1 million people who want to try your grapefruit diet, or who can’t get their kids to sleep at night.

With the rise in freedom of choice has come a rise in individuality.  And with the rise of individuality has come a rise in the power of choice.  The more choices people have, the more they segregate themselves into smaller and smaller niches in society.”

As marketers, this trend presents both a challenge and an opportunity.  The challenge is reaching broad audiences with our messages.  But the opportunity is that our dollars can be more efficiently spent targeting just those consumers likely to connect with our messages.

An agency created the Stop sign? This video is a little too close to reality on many days in an agency. As agency professionals, we should strive to prevent events like this, but sadly, that is not always possible. Regardless, the video is pretty funny. Enjoy.

Google has been ranked the most reputable company in the country – a list it wasn’t on at all four years ago. See the entire article at AdAge. Google doesn’t spend any money to advertise its brand or services. According to Robert Fronk, senior VP-senior consultant, reputation strategy, at Harris Interactive:

“The positive perception of how you treat your employees, your corporate-social-responsibility efforts, and your products and services and the amount of media that can generate probably trumps any ad spend they would ever want to make.”

However, HP, a company that has recently re-invigorated its advertising to lean more to the hip and cool:

“…made not only the biggest jump from 2006 to 2007 — 21 spots, from No. 38 to No. 17 — but also the biggest jump in the history of the study.”

Coincidence?

Focus groups feel so old-school.  Marketers have been doing them forever and the methodology really hasn’t changed all that much since that “Mad Men” era.   With the crazy amounts of consumer-generated media available to marketers, it is odd that we would even bother convene focus groups to tell us what consumers think about the brands we represent: people are telling us–and the world–without our asking.  It seems that some companies are latching on to this new media better than others and using blog communities to gather relevant insights.  As reported in AdWeek:

“Now firms with expertise ranging from research and word of mouth to digital media are setting up closed communities for clients to tap into the nuances, the spontaneity and the language of consumers engaging in a leisurely change, a different dynamic to one where they sit face-to-face in a focus group for a prescribed period of time.  Some of the initiatives focus on a specific topic for a couple of weeks; others create a longer, ongoing conversation.

“‘…when you are a running a qualitative blog: You have people for 10 to 15 days, which is a huge  amount of time for them to think about their answers and to challenge your own questions, which makes a big difference in results.  What people say when they talk together is more interesting than what they say when they talk to us.  What they say peer to peer is more sincere and sometimes very intimate.”

“She’s married, well-educated, trendy and environmentally conscientious.  She works full time, is likely sleep deprived and feels that time is her most precious commodity.  Meet today’s 30-something woman.”  – Advertising Age.  The article goes on to say that women in their 30s don’t fit as easily into marketing buckets a baby boomers or male 18-35:

“Sure, they get profiled as mothers or career women, as health statistics or dating singles, but not often just as women of a 30ish age.”

Key findings from a Marie Claire survey reported in the article:

• More than half named environmental issues such as global warming and pollution as concerns.
• The relative youth of the 30-something woman allows her to be more casual about health issues, but that doesn’t mean they’re not on her mind.  Balance the health push with the realistic acknowledgment of everyday life and slip-ups for a more empathetic brand image.
• Today’s career woman doesn’t leave her business acumen at her desk.  She researches and shops products before spending any money.
• They are most concerned with their family and their own emotional health–in that order.

BMW, already known for being on the forefront of new media opportunities–evident by their introduction of BMW Films several years ago–is again proving itself to be a brand that can differentiate itself through digital media, with the launch of a campaign for the new 1-Series. Because the new vehicle is targeted at younger audience, BMW smartly chose to spend almost half their marketing budget online.

Reported in the NY Times:

“Almost half the spending for the campaign, estimated at $15 million to $25 million, is being devoted to online media. By comparison, executives at BMW of North America say, Internet ad spending for other models ranges from 1 percent to 15 percent of the total ad budgets.

“The online elements of the 1-Series campaign include letting members of Facebook…design virtual cars and send them to Facebook friends; buying dominant positions, known as take-overs, on the home pages of msn.com and yahoo.com; posting video clips on YouTube; and developing a microsite devoted to the 1-Series (bmwusa.com/new1).

“The campaign is indicative of efforts by mainstream marketers to alter their media mixes as consumers change their media habits. A recent survey by PQ Media projected that by 2012, advertisers will increase spending by 82 percent from 2008 in areas like search-engine marketing, online video and e-mail messages.”

However, while it seems like I would be in the target market (identified as 20-somethings and 30-somethings) for this new car, I can’t find the Facebook app or the YouTube videos. And, the microsite is hardly a microsite. It looks like any other car website where you can customize and price your vehicle. Am I missing something here? Someone, please tell me.

Well, maybe I will be able to find the traditional ads, which seem pretty cool too:

“There are some unconventional approaches for the traditional media, too. Three magazines — City, Dwell and Paste — are printing pure-white covers that are glued over the actual front covers of the issues; there are ads for the 1-Series on the other sides of the extra covers.

“And magazines like City and AutoWeek are running tiny ads for the 1-Series with numerical themes at the bottom of editorial pages, which double as page-number identifications.

“For example, there is an itsy-bitsy white car on page 26 of the April issue of the magazine City next to this sentence: ’26: number of bones in right foot you’ll use to crush the gas pedal on the all-new BMW 1-Series.’

“At the bottom of page 60, there is a miniature red car and this sentence: ’60: m.p.h. you can reach in 5.1 seconds with the all-new BMW 135i coupe.’

“Text Analytics–a general term for the mining and interpretation of written words–has been used for more than two decades, most notably by the defense industry as far back as the Cold War to read into the word choices and text of, say, a speech written by Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev.” — according to a recent article in Ad Age.

The article goes on to say that marketers are increasingly using text analytics to mine information from customer service surveys, e-mails, online forums, and blogs.  “…while the blogosphere and social networks have so far not proved great advertising media, text analytics offers the potential to make them stronger marketing vehicles.”

Dove used the tool to not only understand reactions to their campaign, but to gain an understanding of what motivates people, which issues are most important to women in their target group, and how to create better products and messaging for them.  All by using text analytics from content on its own message boards.

What a fantastic way to leverage social media tools with a quantitative analysis!

Product sampling has always been used by consumer-product companies on the premise: “try it, you’ll like it.”  But for sampling to work, you have to have a product for them to sample.  HBO has a product and in the past has offered limited-time-only access to its subscription channel in an effort to get people to sign up.  With technology now allowing online viewing of video for the masses, HBO is taking an interesting new approach to sampling: putting episodes of one its new series online for free.

“While the show has enjoyed wide critical acclaim, some viewers have checked out. The first week of episodes drew 316,000 viewers, on average, and the numbers have declined steadily, to an average of 196,000 in week four.

“Now the pay cable channel is doing something it normally does not do: give away some of the episodes. The first three weeks of “In Treatment” are available free on HBO.com, and the first four episodes are also on YouTube [see episode one here].

“HBO says the free episodes are part of a sampling strategy for the series that is unconnected to the ratings.”

This is a great idea for getting viewers hooked and wanting more.

“No matter which services you choose, the most important point is simply to use video.  Too many companies don’t have clips showing their products, their philosophies, or simple news announcements by their CEOs.  Business is a conversation, and video is increasingly how that conversation takes place.” — summary of an article in this month’s Fast Company that talks all about the various ways video can be used by businesses.