I am in gagdet envy again. Pure Digital have made a “Flip” video camera, perfect for the youtube generation. Its the size of a digital camera.   The beauty of this camera is its simplicity.  There are no tapes or discs, no menus or settings, no lens cap, no memory card, no headphone jack.  You turn it on and it’s ready to film in two seconds.  You press the red button to record and once to stop and play to review the video.  When the memorys full (30/60 minutes depending on model) you slide a button and a USB jack pops out and you are spared the hassle of finding a USB cable.  Amazing.  As the NYT states “Its the very definition of less is more.”  In the US, you have 5 year olds along with 80 year old grandmothers using it. 

Women love it.  Because they can put it into their handbags, coat pockets, beach bags.   Rather than make it more complicated with extra features due to the “forces of the feature creeps” that no-one will ever use like most technology on the market, the Flip goes back to basics.  Its simple, convenenient and good value and its flying off the shelves like hot cakes.  According to the NYT, it has captured 13% of the camcorder market in one year. 

I want one.   My husband is in the habit of carying a very heavy and inconvenient Nikon D200 – he says that even though he loves it, it’s a nuisance to get out of his bag and set up.  Most dSLR cameras sit on a shelf and gather dust.  I want the equivalent of a point and shoot, plug and play that I can use spontaneously to capture my son’s first steps and slip into my handbag.   We bought a JVC camera when my son was born and have hardly used it.  It’s quite bulky, quite complicated and the first time I used it I was frustrated as I couldn’t master it and I felt out of my mental zone.  Since then, it mostly lay on the floor of our office. 

I agree with Hawkins, referenced in the NYT “If you are successful at something the first time you try, you fall in love with it instantly in love with it.”  So many of the women I spoke to feel frustration and annoyance rather than a sense of pride and happiness with much of the technology on the market.   Once they have had a bad first experience, they default to their partner or a male friend or they give up completely.  The Flip will continue to make women fall in love with it.   I hope the marketing strategy is as good as the product!

I am often asked for good examples of how tech brands should commuinicate with women: The fact is that good examples are few and far between. There is of course Apple, but praising apple is now a marketing cliche, but Apple always seems to get their tone right: They make technology simple but more importantly, they make technology inviting to women.

We might compare the minimalist elegance of Apple’s advertising with this trade ad from microsoft which so desperately attempts to appeal to women.

It fails on multiple levels:

Firstly, I am affronted by the thought that Microsoft think they have to make it feel like a fashion ad to make women interested. It smacks of a group of middle aged marketing men appealing to the same old stereotypes and assumptions, spesificaly that women do not care for technology.

I can imagine the moment in the team meeting where the oldest guy in the rooms suggests: “Why don’t we disguise the products and sell them as if they were…wait for it…SHOES!”, only to be met by raturous applause from his colleagues who are all relieved to get this messy business of female marketing out of the way.

In my own extensive research I found that women are interested in technology but are put off by exactly this kind of stereotyping.

Secondly, Microsoft need to make fundamental changes to their company that makes women feel that they are interested in talking to them rather than just paying lip service to women with one ad. This goes right from looking at ensuring women are in leadership positions (Sony now have an Executive Women’s Committee, Yahoo new president is Susan Decker and Google have promoted the first female enginner to VP status- Melissa Mayer) to designing products that are intuitive, instinctive and emotional.

Its clear that this product bundle has not been designed with women in mind. Maybe I am wrong, but this seems to be more about off-loading some excess stock than opening up new markets.

And lastly, from an advertising perspective, there is no compelling and relevant idea in this ad. What does ‘Innovation Styled for Life’ actually mean? This sounds like vacous marketese.

Where is the innovation in this product bundle? How are these products styled for my life? I can’t relate to the life of the women in this ad. She looks more like a Pop Idol contestant than a real person who might have a compelling need for these products. The women I spoke to do not want technology ‘styled for life.’ They want technology to fit in their lives not style their lives around technology.

My advice for Microsoft – encourage your agency to spend some time investigating how women really engage with these products. There’s no shame in selling a product on it’s aesthetic appeal – however Microsoft need to find a way to lift themselves above the level of nonsense established by the fashion industry.

I heartily agree with The Register’s report last week on DAB’s failure, despite ten years of hype by Britain’s most powefull media monopoly. The Register’s Andrew Orlowski writes:

Well, DAB has to be the best thing to happen to the Corporation in the past decade. It screws commercial radio rivals, who hand over £100,000 for a property (licence), and then must give the “penthouse suite” back to the public broadcaster. The paltry audiences for DAB mean the commercial operators must bleed red ink, while the BBC runs its own deeply subsidised digital broadcasts. Trebles all round!

That’s why you’re unlikely to hear the true extent of the digital radio fiasco on the Beeb itself, and why the digital propaganda is likely to continue.

It’s not just commercial broadcasters who find themselves excluded from DAB – the extortionate cost excludes community and non-commercial projects who simply cannot afford to pay for the license and the high-end equipment needed to broadcast via DAB.

From the consumer’s perspective the future of DAB continues to look grim – prices of DAB sets have come down from their original crazy prices (the first Pure Digital branded radios cost in excess of £500), however at a time regular transistor FM radios can be bought for pennies the cheapest DAB tuner is closer to £40.

The reason for this is that DAB is a quaintly British standard – that has not been adopted in any other country. Accordingly few of the major foreign electronics firms have seen fit to develop a product which could only ever be marketed to a single country.

Orlowski argues that Britian might have been better off DAB+ or the popular AAC format as our next-generation digital audio platform, however I think this just misses the point that there are already so many other kinds of affordable devices that might soon be able to do a better job:

My Nokia phone has an internet radio receiver which can pick up far more stations than my kitchen-bound DAB receiver, and companies like Recieva alread market devices which look exactly like DAB radios but which work on entirely open standards.

If only the BBC had spent the taxpayer’s money advertising a standard that everbody can use then they might not have got themselves into such a pickle.

 

I’ve just spent the last hour chatting to a Geek Squad ‘agent’- Lee.    The company has grown in the US for the past 13 years and has now done a tie up deal with Carephone Warehouse and will be rolled out to over 100 of their UK stores, which quite frankly are not the most inviting and female friendly and you get pounced on as soon as you walk in the door.  As one woman told me, “I feel like bait when i walk into a Carephone Warehouse.” 

The Geek Squad is a great concept.  They will help you for a small fee with your IT issues in store or remotely.  They also offer a home service for £70 a visit.  They will sort out all your IT problems.  They describe themselves as a ‘Dr Doolittle, surgeon and witchdoctor’ all in one.  They are geek chic, they have to wear white socks (!), short sleeve shirts, have police style ID badges, clip on ties and call themselves agents.   Out of 40 agents, sadly only 3 are women but even so, they seem very friendly and don’t elevate themselves to a superior status.  We chatted to Lee who was obviously brilliant at his job and made us feel at ease asking what we considered very dumb questions (its funny how women begin their questions about IT with the prefice ‘I know this is a stupid question but…’   Men don’t seem to ever seem to do this).

Lee told us one example where he was trying to help a women who was getting so frustrated that she shouted at him when he told her he would have to charge her a nominal fee for setting up her Blackberry ‘IS THAT A WOMAN TAX YOU ADD ON?’  Women do get frustrated by technology.  It’s so much easier to default to a man/friend/partner and not feel stupid but in this way we will never feel comfortable with technology.   Women have to embrace technology.  Its up to women to take the lead and sort out their technology needs…and if they get frustrated…there’s always the Geek Squad.

I read an interesting post from OCMod Shop which highlights the fact that many women are being ignored by technology companies even when they are often the key influencers of technology buying decisions even for male early adopters. Men may still control the boardroom but women definitely control the living room, bedroom, kitchen when it comes to buying technology. Its true that marketers have pretty much nailed the tweens, teens and older people with devices like the Wii, but very few with the exception of Sony Bravia, Apple (boring I know), BestBuy in the US and some of the UK department stores are doing exceptional things to inspire women to actually enjoy technology.

The article states that in the US, 84% of internet users now store digital pictures, 59% store music, 36% video clips, 26% store personal videos and 17% store movies and TV shows. We know that women are the drivers of capturing memories and personal videos of their families. In my household, this is absolutely true. It maybe be my husband who takes most of the pictures but its me who will store them on flickr. Its me that sends albums out to our families every 6 months. Its me that will go back to them time after time and marvel at how beautiful our sprogs are (even if they are not).

I don’t think that companies have succeeded yet in understanding what women use their technology devices for and why. Many companies, to paraphrase Sean Connery, just don’t understand women; what women are looking for and how to inspire them when it comes to technology. Listening to them, really listening (not just doing your average dull focus group asking the same old boring questions) would be a good place to begin.

I read an interesting article in this week’s International Herald Tribune about the growing purchasing and influencing power of women:

The Consumer Electronics Association in the US estimates that this year women will make 40% of consumer electronics purchases in what is a $200 billion industry. Indirectly , as spouses, girlfriends, significant others, daughters and mothers, they will influence another 21% of purchases, making their total involvement a whopping 61%, up from 57% in 2004.

That is a lot of buying power considering the average US household has 25 electronic devices. Many of the highest ticket items will reside in the living room such as the HDTV, PVR, Console, stereo and this is in the most part the terrain of the women. As the design of electronics gets better and better, women are more interesting in choosing the electronics and styling is a big part of this. I say part, as many of the electronics fall into the ‘colour’ or ‘fashion’ trap by thinking design=colour=pink and that women have no interest in performance and software.

And as Elizabeth Kelan, co-author of this blog, discusses the retail experience in the IHT article “…Walking into an electronics store is like walking into a men’s locker room. But slowly, progress is being made.”

Sony, despite being late into the flat panel market, is doing some ground-breaking stuff that goes beyond the superficial. They have clearly identified the financial gains to be made if executed well and have set up a gender steering committee of its’ top European executives to revamp product lines and better connect with women.

The new Bravia’s remote contol (on the left) has been designed to enhance a living room coffee table. The TVs have a single cable for all electronic communication. Not only that, they are redesigning their retail outlets in Switzerland to include couches and offer child care services (that would be heaven for me and most mums) and their staff are being trained to ask about interior design tastes and wishes. As Nichola Hinton puts it, “The Bravia is essentially a piece of furniture.” Where women largely control the home, in particular the living room, and what goes into it, this is a very wise strategy.

I know what I want for Christmas.  A guilt free laptop that is small and yes I am embarrased to say it, but one I can carry in my handbag.  I want to take it to a cafe, pretend I am Carrie from Sex in the City, write stuff on long journeys and most importantly, I don’t want to share it with anyone.   For the first time you can buy an Asus EEE laptop for under £200 which is incredible value.  My previous laptop (which I share with my husband and he gets first dibs on) cost us around a £1000 - a price I could never justify for myself. 

Naturally this is a much less capable machine than the latest macbook.  It’s screen is tiny and it’s CPU goes at a fraction of the Macbook’s speed. On the other hand do most people need all that power? It seems crazy that people are buying multi Gigahertz machines when many people, especially women, just want to browse the Internet, check their email and write a presentation.   Most women are not turned on by gigahertz, ram, horse power and all those phrases that baffle them into thinking that technology is something to be feared and intimidated by.

Also, changing the price-point of a laptop changes the way we think about it: Previously with laptops costing in excess of £1000 we would probably hope to get three good years of life out of the machine. If we only pay £200 for a machine we can upgrade the machine every year. By the end of the 3rd year, the frequent upgrader who spends less
would probably end up with a better machine in her bag.

If you are no longer asking women to choose between holiday abroad or a car or a laptop but sacrifice the equivalent of a posh meal, this makes the purchase much more appealing and to some extent takes some of the fear out of the purchase as it positions it as an every day purchase.  

Lets just hope that Father Christmas is reading this and my wish comes true…

The old adage about men not asking for directions has an element of truth to it when it comes to my husband. Having observed quite a few of women & men driving, its clear that men and women think very differently about getting directions, planning routes and the technology that can help them do that. Susi Weaser from Shiny Shiny mentioned this fascinating piece of research to me from Standford University which highlights significant differences between the way men and women subconsciously react to stimuli.

In the first experiment, the researchers examined how clothes shopping influences subsequent choices. They found that men who were exposed to the idea of shopping for a new wardrobe became much more focused on the end result in a subsequent (ostensibly unrelated) task of plotting a route for a cross-country trip, tending to choose the most direct route. In contrast, women exposed to clothes shopping were far more willing to take the scenic route. Many men tend to be “purpose driven” when clothes shopping (they shop for specific items and only when they are needed), whereas many women tend to be “possibility driven” (they browse and shop to “see what’s out there”).

I see a huge opportunity for sat nav companies to connect with the growing proportion of women who could be persuaded to own a sat nav, 17% of the women I spoke to own a sat nav, and according to Mintel, it is the gadget that women most frequently admit to wanting.

However, when it comes to product, retail and advertising, most seem to fail to target the female market altogether or those that put a toe in the water like Garmin tend to do the pinking up and dumbing down as shown in this ad.

(The Garmin 200 and 250 comes in ‘powder pink’ and ‘candy pink’ respectively, women also get their own matching accessory cases called Penelope Pitstop’s Compact Pussycat!)

However, these 2 functional ads are far more typical of the way the sat nav companies advertise their hardware. Specifically, they list out features and show huge pictures of the machine but do not attempt to create any emotional connection.

My relationship with my Tom Tom could not be more different. I love my sat nav. I had a Tom Tom Go and then upgraded to Tom Tom 1 v2. It gives me freedom. It makes me feel liberated. It gives me confidence. It connects me to my friends. As a mum, if I didn’t have it, like lots of fellow mums, I would be stuck indoors or restricted to only going to those familiar places. I’d like to get more women to see the benefits of using a personal navigation system. Many don’t really see the benefits of a sat nav until they have experienced one. The fear factor also comes into play. A lot of women are daunted by technology and questions such as ‘Am i going to be able to set it up?’ ‘What if it goes wrong?’ Not to mention when you walk into a place like Halfords, which is used to selling ‘kit’ to petrol heads, its not really surprising that women don’t feel they can get answers to their questions.

Women make technology purchases in the same way they make other purchases: its emotional, instinctive and intuitive. Looking at the advertising, I would say there is a fair way to go!

I saw this Panasonic ad in one of the Sunday mags. It’s not that it’s a bad ad (and actually the overall thought of Ideas for Life is a great one) ; it’s just that it misses an opportunity to tap into the female mindset and how women buy technology. It’s talking about one of the things that is going to appeal to women: a well designed, small high definition video camera. But the masculine and literal way it talks about ‘power’ and all the technical detail of advanced optical image stabalisation fails to appeal to me.

When I bought my camera after my first son was born; all I thought about was I wanted to capture his first steps. That was it. I had no brand or model, let alone spec in mind, which is according to our latest research, how half of UK women shop. I just wanted something that was going to be light so I could put it in my bag (yes I am sorry if that sounds naff but its true), easy to use (so I didn’t have to keep asking my husband to use it) but most importantly started to keep records of my son that I could embarrass him with when he was eighteen (yes I am wicked).

There are so many ways that technology companies could capture the imagination of women. Tech companies need to get women to dream about how technology enhances their family life. But so often tech brands just keep falling into the same old traps and stereotypes of talking about power and spec and forget who in 80% of households, controls the technology purse strings: Women.

From research we know that engineers and designers tend to use themselves as the ideal for which they create new technologies. That means that we often end up with technology that is designed by engineers and with engineers in mind. While a small proportion of technically-versed men (and women) might find this technology easy to use, most people probably won’t. My research on gender and technology has shown that women prefer to use technology that is intuitive to use and does not require you to study the manual for hours. In fact, many men would prefer this as well.

Creating technology that is more intuitive to use is an important step in making technology more accessible to all. While the graphical user interface and the mouse as input device was popularised in the 1990s, not much has changed since then. Until recently. Apple’s new iPhone and iPod touch use a multi-touch technology to make the technology more intuitive to navigate. And what could be more intuitive than using your fingers. Last week I attended a presentation by Steve Ballmer, Microsofts’ CEO. He presented a new piece of technology which included a multi-touch screen similar to the one of the iPhone. The Microsoft Surface is a table PC that is operated by touch alone. It syncs with other devices such as mobile phone and digital cameras through simply putting them on the surface. These new touch technologies make it more intuitive to operate technology. In fact they provide tools to integrate technology much more into everyday life. Then technology is no longer designed for engineers by engineers but by engineers for people.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070530-what-lurks-below-microsofts-surface-a-qa-with-microsoft.html

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/iphone-review.ars

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/The-iPod-meets-the-iPhone-a-review-of-the-iPod-touch.ars