I will be joining a top line up at Being-Digital ’09 on 9th June at Centre Point in London. We will be bringing together some of the best digital minds and demos. The conference focus is on debate and discussion; both in person and via SMS or Twitter feedback. I plan to be about most of the day – so hope to see you there.

Links for the programme, registration and website are below:

Website: http://www.being-digital.com
Programme: http://www.tinyurl.com/beingdigital09
Tickets: http://www.being-digital.com/register/
Twitter: @mashupevent

Historically women were often seen as the reserve army of labour who take men’s jobs in factories and offices while men were at war. In a crisis women’s labour power was deemed important.

A similar thing seems to happen in regards to women’s purchasing power. Often ignored in good times, The Economist claims that marketers realize the importance of women as customers during the recession.   In the article entitled ‘Hello, girls’ echoing the iconic ‘Hello, boys’ Wonderbra adverts of the 1990s, it is mentioned that women buy 90% of food and 55% of consumer electronics and in fact most new cars. Women are thus a major force when it comes to purchasing power.

Marti Barletta, who authored ‘Marketing to Women’ points to three reasons why women are the new target market. First, brand loyalty which is apparently higher with women. Second, women are good at spreading the message about products they like. And third, most of the job losses in the States were in male-dominated areas.

The examples of recent campaigns quoted in the article includes Frito-Lay. Frito-Lay is enticing female customers with the slogan ‘Only in a Woman’s World’ to get away from the masculine image that crisps apparently have. McDonalds’ is sponsoring the New York Fashion Week to promote new hot drinks for women.

However the article also mentioned that changing the brand image through associating it with women can have negative effects: when Porsche designed a car for women, this increased sales with women temporarily but many male customers were lost – on the basis that the brand was too feminine.

 

 

In relation to technology, Dell seems to get the message. They launched a website called Della, where they sell amongst other devices the Inspiron Mini 10 Netbook explicitly to women. The exterior seems to be a far cry away from the appearance of the Dell laptop I used to have from work. It is available in many colours and patterns. Many of those are designed by artists. Della laptops allow customization and while your netbook might look more artistic, once you open it, it looks as dull as many other Dell computers. Maybe companies need to be a bit more creative in marketing to women – particularly in a recession.

Marketers seem to have finally come around to see that mothers use the Web 2.0. The insightful report called Digital Mom was produced by Razorfish and CafeMom.

 

The first part of the report is based on a survey with 1,500 mothers who are users of Web 2.0. The report produced some interesting findings:

1.    65% of mums use social networking sites, 56% SMS and 52% game online or via a game console. This is for me the most striking finding showing that gaming is no longer a niche activity for adolescent boys but has gone mainstream.

2.    There are also age differences. Moms over 35  are more likely to use the web as an information tool while moms under 35 are more likely to use social network sites. Also women with children over 12 tend to game more (57%) than women with children under 12 (51%).

3.    The mothers’ interests go beyond parenting. These women retain many interests. In the last three months the surveyed mothers had researched or purchases fashion items or clothing (40%), food and cooking (31%) and baby/parenting (26%), banking (22%), computer and electronics (21%) and medication/medical condition (20%).

Part 2 is based on an in-depth survey of 1,750 women active in CafeMum.

4.    Digitalmoms spent 18.5 hours per week online.

5.    These mums are active in social networking sites not passive consumers.

6.    The report develops five segments of digital mums: the self-expressor, the utility mum, the groupster, the infoseeker and the hyperconnector.

Marketers seems to have discovered that mums online a worthwhile target group. I wonder when we will see the Digital Dad.

In most Western countries studying computing has long been seen as a male endeavor. However this is not the case across the world. Vivian Lagesen’s research in fact shows that in Malaysia computer science is populated by women. In her summary report for Women-nomics, she stresses that in Malaysia computing is not seen as masculine but instead a good employment for women. In fact, faculty in computing degrees is often female. There are perceived to be plenty of jobs in computing and the office environment of IT jobs is seen as safe.  Vivian’s research shows how flexible the social construction of computing can be. 

This weekend I have been very upset about Baby P. As a mum, I struggle to understand how anyone can fail to protect and cherish your own child. A child’s love of its mother is unconditional. A child is powerless. A child just wants to be loved, sheltered and protected. A lot of mums feel overwhelmed by the sadness of this story, it seemed to be the biggest topic on the social-networks last weekend.

One group on Facebook (with over 5000 members) used it’s collective investigative power to expose the identities of the mum and ‘carers’ of Baby P. Another group which was less investigativly inclined was entitled entitled “Death is too good for [the mother's name], torture the bitch that killed Baby P.”   Instinctively I felt that this was deserved retribution.  But then I wondered how this could be a good thing.

Do Facebook vigilantes or any other social network have the right or power to bring justice to those who ‘deserve’ it? Is it a case of mob rule or just desserts being served? Is this the downside to a democritisation of media?

Most Facebook groups focus on the benign and trivial: I was amused to see a group who want John Sergeant be their granddad. This is Britain at its eccentric best.  A disrespect for the rules of “Strictly Come Dancing” may be a bit of harmless fun, but what happens when Facebook communities start to openly challenge the rule of law?

The role of social networks has changed. No longer are they restricted to being a ‘social utility’ connecting friends for a big night out. Facebook’s users are a collection of single-issue political-parties, each akin to the gun or knife-control lobbying groups.

Once upon a time, you needed to be in position of power to make things happen. Now, you and me can make a change for better or worse simply by asserting opinions online – on anything we believe passionately about.  Whether its to bring back Laura back to the X Factor or or to send a virtual lynch-mob after the villain of the moment. Social networks are proving themselves as serious enabling tools that put power into groups who were once considered to disparate, too obscure or too apathetic to become involved with a political process.

But are we witnessing technology enabling democracy at its best?

According to the US polls, women are the most important and difficult voter to win over. Not only are they in the majority (53%), they are more likely to be undecided in the run up to the election. Recent events show that Obama has been successful with women, particularly young women (Senator Obama won 35 percent of women, while Senator Clinton won 30 percent).

Why is women are drawn to Obama in a way they are not drawn to McCain or Hilary Clinton? What is that Obama has that is appealing to women that McCain does not have?

Obama has already been voted marketer of the year by Time magazine. His “organising idea” is focused on a clear and consistent message: Change. And he delivers it in an inspirational way through the media women use (youtube, blogs, facebook etc). But more fundamentally, the reason Obama is successful is because he focuses on what women care about.

Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, states:

“Women see themselves as more economically vulnerable than men, more likely recipients of the social safety net at some point in their lives, and they see a larger role for government.”

As a working mum of two, I often find myself cooking the tea, washing up, shoving in some washing, on the phone paying a bill and doing the shopping online- all at the same time. Its me, not my husband, who thinks about the cost of food and energy going up. Its me who thinks about how to cut back this Christmas on presents. And its me who thinks that we should eat in rather than get a take out.

With women as the Chief Household Officer, Obama is making a relevant connection that brands could learn from. With Oprah behind him, Obama appears to be a ladies man.

 

 

I love taking my iPod to the gym because it gives me the freedom to listen to music that reflects my exercise mood. However when using the iPod on the cross trainer, one of my favourite cardiovascular machines, I often manage to almost strangle myself. I wear my iPod with an armband around my upper arm (the earphone cables are dangling around and can get caught easily in the cross trainer). The armband looks a bit like an oversized sticking plaster but is overall quite stylish and does the job – as long as I don’t do anything where I need the biceps. The cable issue remains annoying and I developed a rather complicated system of keeping the cable out of my way.

However I then came across a much nicer solution: the Arriva headphones. You basically wear the MP3 player at the back of your head and have small cables leading into your ears. This does solve the cable problem. The downside: it is only available for the iPod shuffle and not for other iPods. Other iPods might be too big to wear them at the back of the head. It might also be difficult to change tracks. But it is a nice idea. Apart from using these headphones for sports it might also come in handy when you don’t want other people to know that you are listening to music. Particularly if you have long hair. 

I have been invited by Sarah Blow to contribute to a Girl Geek Dinner alongside Julie Lerman who will talk about what it means to be a geekette. The Girl Geek Dinner will take place on Thursday, October 09, 2008 from 06:30 PM – 09:30 PM and is generously hosted by Microsoft, London. I hope to see many of you there.

I feel old. Ancient. Positively archaic. I am doing some ethnography research for a client in the area of technology. I am spending the day with Amy. Amy is 18, turning 19 and just received her A level results. Amy is confident and incredibly articulate for an 18 year old. I am asking Amy questions which she dutifully answers in a very text book way. She then mentions facebook and her whole face lights up. Amy comes alive at this point. She runs over to her Dell laptop and logs on to Facebook. She shows me she her 353 ‘friends’ on Facebook. She tells me that Facebook is as important to her as chocolate. Its an addiction. Its a craving. She wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks about what happened that day in Facebook. She asks me if I want to speak to any of her friends on Facebook.

This got me wondering, are social networks a much more effective and authentic way to research young people? Are online omnibus studies and traditional ways of researching teenagers less effective in an age where the currency of the ‘yoof’ is through the lens of Facebook?

Amy shows me today’s events. Jo has split up from Anthony (I am shocked that people put when their relationship ends on Facebook. Do people dump people by Facebook as well?). Emma has tagged her in her holiday photos. The guy she met in malia has written on her wall. Amy is organising a ‘results’ party for 200 people (she has just done her A-levels). She couldn’t organise a party without Facebook. I ask her if Facebook is a fad. She tells me undeniably its not. MySpace was a fad but now everyone has moved to Facebook. Facebook has the ‘durability’ factor. The ‘talkability’ factor. She has 33 friends online at this moment. I feed her questions to her friends. I get answers from her friends immediately. I then ask more questions. Its rich information. Its visceral. It is not pre-determined. Its authentic. Amazingly, its free.

I recently completed an online research study for the Future Foundation. Not only was it incredibly boring to complete (and I am a researcher by trade so god knows how boring it was for everyone else), if I am totally honest I felt compelled to write the ‘right thing.’ To write the ‘intelligent thing.’ Most importantly, to write ‘the expected thing.’ When I received the final report, many of the things I had said I actually disagreed with. To really go ‘one floor down’ as a pyschotherapist would say, surely we need to get that visceral instantaneous reaction which is not going to come from a online omnibus or a focus group? If you want to see how the tiger hunts, don’t go to the zoo. You need to go to the jungle. Or in this case, the jungle called Facebook.