Women's New Media

Honda Humms it Up

I've been out looking at cars for the last couple of weeks and finally made a decision today to go with my heart and my conscience. I bought a fuel efficient Honda. Yes I did go for the leather seats and moonroof so I'm not sacrificing comfort but I feel good that I'm back to driving a small zippy car rather than a small thirsty SUV.

Speaking of zippy things, here's a great example of a viral marketing campaign from Honda that will get your heart going. Even if you aren't a Honda lover, if you love creativity and cars, or just get a kick out of adults making noises like kids, you'll get a kick out of this musical video. (Mary Beth heard about it and sent it to me.)

MySpace - Teens Love It, Parents Hate It

MySpace has been enormously popular in a short amount of time.  The issue of MySpace conjures up the image of trying to balance fascination and fear.  MySpace was created in 2003 and boasts 43 million users.  But to make some gross generalizations, kids love it and parents either don't know about it or if they do, they hate it.  The fascination with MySpace is that teens use it as a way to connect, a method of personal expression through a combination of journaling, photographs, music selections, inside jokes, listing of friends, etc...All wonderful for creative expression and personal connection.  However, MySpace owner NewsCorp is taking some heat for safety issues which leave young and unsuspecting contributors open to the world at large.  A Massachusetts Police Chief claims that "one out of five kids gets sexually contacted over the internet."  Online predators can find a teen's profile on MySpace or Friendster and note their likes and dislikes, can see pictures of teens, and use that information in a virtual conversation to engage them. 

News on HER Time

News on HER Time – Women need to be able to pick and choose the time of day they consume news and information. Many TV/radio news shows are missed because it simply is not convenient to watch TV or listen to the radio when they are being broadcast.  The stories may be of extreme interest but the timing is poor.  The chances of a woman being available for the 6:00 news is about as likely as a blizzard in Hawaii.  Six o’clock at most houses are a time of mass chaos - women are getting home from work, kids are demanding help with homework, dinner is being prepared, etc... Newspapers can be read when the reader chooses but a woman might only have 15 minutes of free time to get the news and it happens to be while she’s in the car driving, which might make reading the newspaper a bit tough.  And…there’s a good chance that she will get in the car after the hourly news broadcast has already gone by. 

Lessons Learned from TV Players - Time Shifting has caught on in a big way with the slew of “On Demand” TV offerings on the market.  Time Shifting is defined in Wikipedia as the recording of a television show to some storage medium to be viewed at a time that is more convenient to the consumer.  In cable television broadcasting, time shifting may also refer to the availability of network affiliate from different time zones, serving a similar function of making television programs available at multiple times throughout the day.  The news industry (newspaper, radio, TV) could benefit from applying the lessons learned from the success of their content peers.  It’s likely that time considerations have driven the trend towards people getting more of their news from the internet – they can get news when they want it and they can get it quickly.  Women would consumer more news if they could get it on thier timing. 

News to Go, Please

I want to take my news with me wherever I go.   I recently heard a radio interview of a busy mother who answered the questions “where do you live?” and she replied “in a Suburban.”  For many of us, reading the newspaper is not an option due to lack of time.  Doesn’t mean we don’t like news.  We just want options that allow us to fit news into our busy lives. According a survey of women from the Washington Post Online, 70% of working women stated that they would be unlikely to remove the internet or radio from their routines when looking to save time, BUT more than half would halt TV, newspaper, and magazine consumption.  Why?  Because we spend a great deal of time in the car and radio fits into our busy lives, and because we have so little discretionary time that the internet allows to find information we need quickly.  The bottom line is that I should be able to choose the delivery method on a minute to minute basis for how I want to consume the news.  We want Multi-Channel Delivery - give women the choice of getting their news via internet, portable device, hard-copy newspaper. Offer options like the ability to convert news to audio format. 

Do You Read Ad Inserts too?

The Center for Media Research reported today that 4 out of 5 consumers read advertising inserts. I usually agree wholeheartedly with the research briefs from the center but I'm having a hard time buying into this statement today. Maybe those numbers are true in specific cases such as 'senior women reading inserts in the Sunday paper to find this week's cheapest over-the counter drugs', but I think the statement is far too broad to make about all consumers. That's the danger of soundbyte marketing when applied to research - the assumptions, criteria and research constraints are left to the readers imagination.

The report brief did provide some interesting tidbits about the impact of ad inserts on female consumers:

It's Time to Join the Discussion

Darwin Magazine has a good article called A Marketers Guide to Blogging by Constantin von Hoffman. If you are a marketer and you haven't jumped into blogging yet, this article makes one really important point: you can't control blog discussions but you can join them. Even if your company isn't blogging yet, some of your employees, customers and competitors are probably blogging and most use search engines daily where blog posts rise quickly in the ranks. Whether you are marketing to men, women or both genders, blogging is most likely impacting your customers and prospects perception and knowledge about your company and products.