Womentum

What's That Smell?

Tomorrow is National Sense of Smell Day. No kidding.

Actually, it’s the 12th Annual National Sense of Smell day. Guess I missed the first eleven. So today we celebrate our noses and the noses of all women. See, women have a more acute sense of smell than men. Combine that with the fact that researchers say scent is the sense most intimately linked to memory, and you can see how this might be worthy of a blog post.

Now, you’ve probably heard that if you’re having an open house, it’s a great idea to be baking some bread or burning some aromatherapy candles as potential buyers tour your home. So doesn’t it stand to reason that retail environments could also explore incorporating scents into their environments? Some already do. For instance, I was in an Aveda salon recently and couldn’t help but saunter on over to a small touch screen that let me choose what scents I wanted to sample. It literally misted about a dozen different aromas as I laughed the entire time.

Now, there’s a company called ScentAir (www.scentair.com) that sells devices that associate more than 1,000 scents with brands at retail. Here’s how it works. Let’s say that you’re walking down the bread aisle at the grocery store and you approach the cinnamon buns. A motion detector sends an electronic signal to the scent generator, the smell of cinnamon buns gently tickles your nose, and then a sign informs you of which product smells so darn good.

How can you resist that? How are you incorporating sensory experiences into your retail environment?

The 38 Hour Day

Here’s a little math problem for you today. If there are 24 hours in the day, then how is it that women are cramming in 38 hours worth of activities into their days? Please try to solve the problem without using any of Einstein’s theories of time and relativity.

Recent studies by Yahoo! and StarCom Media revealed that women are “multiminding” – thinking about more than one thing even as they watch TV, work on a project for the office (I have to leave for a haircut in 15 minutes) or cook dinner. Multiminding is a cousin to multitasking, perhaps the most overused phrase of the last five years. (Can’t forget to write on the calendar that my friend Cathryn will be in town to spend the night in May)

So why are women forced to spread their attentions so thin? Well, the Department of Labor reports that 78 percent of women are now in the workplace and that women spend about twice the amount of time as a working man on household chores and childcare. (Did I feed Woody the cat this morning?)

With time more compressed than ever, what can marketers do to reach these time-starved women?
• Get to really know them. Instead of working based on assumptions and clichés, take time to understand what motivates your female customers and how your product or service can fit into her life.
• Recognize that she’s busy. Give her what she needs when she needs it and in a way that’s meaningful. If it’s too hard for her to find the information she needs, she’s outta there. (Must remember to drop off Race for Cure forms on the way to my haircut appointment)
• Be where she is. Marketers who take a holistic approach and weave their messages into her everyday life stand a better chance of making it onto her radar.
• Take her seriously. There are still many companies out there that don’t believe women are important and influential consumers. Wake up and smell the coffee! (Write down in daytimer to pick up bread from Ollie’s Bakery on Friday for trip to Virginia)

Cheers! Wine for Women

Today we raise our wine glasses to Rainier Wine (www.rainierwine.com) to celebrate its two new wine brands – Grand Embrace and Mad Housewife. The Washington State winery spent nearly a year asking women in ten metro areas what kinds of wine they’d like to buy on a regular basis.

Co-owner Mike Lynch talks about wines with brand stories. Mad Housewife, available in Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, sports a label that reads, “Somewhere near the cool shadows of the laundry room. Past the litter box and between the plastic yard toys. This is your time. Time to enjoy a moment to yourself. A moment without the madness. The dishes can wait. Dinner be damned. Mad Housewife Cabernet.”

The wines are available in the Pacific Northwest for $9.99 a bottle.

But back to the really cool thing about these wines. They spent a year – A YEAR – getting a good read, collecting feedback and establishing relationships with women before they ever got a product to market. How many times do you rush into a project before talking with your consumers? How often do you touch base with them and take a peek into their real lives? My bet is not often enough…..

Female FM

Here’s a little note about something I recently heard about.

A radio station in the Caribbean, Jamaica I think, that’s only for women. Called Heartbeat 13.5 FM, the station is run by several young women who are quick to point out that they are not male-bashing. “We’re not saying no to men,” said the station’s Marketing Consultant Kiran Maharaj, “When men listen they might be able to understand a little more about women. There’s always this stigma attached that we’re a mystery. We just need to be listened to a little more.”

Are you listening to your female consumers?

Is Best Buy Doing It Best?

Women buy more than $55 billion of consumer electronics every year and influence roughly 75 percent of all the category’s purchases. And sales are projected to grow a healthy 6 percent per year.

Best Buy, the $24 billion company, recently launched the Jill Initiative, a program targeting tech- and trend-savvy working suburban moms with disposable income. To lure more Jills into Best Buy’s big box stores, the chain has introduced a new prototype featuring six “experience zones.”

• Entertainment Connection – play games, movies and music
• Home Theatre Zone – grab a seat on the couch, snack on some popcorn and check out the latest plasma screen TV in a completely furnished home theatre environment
• The Geek Squad – computer experts tackle service, upgrades and advice
• Computer Zone – allows hands-on interaction with the latest desktops and laptops
• Entertainment – browse the newest on-the-road gadgets
• Appliances – contains three distinct kitchen models, all decked out with computers, DVD players and TVs.

What’s the benefit of all this? It allows women to see electronics in a natural environment. This is a dramatic change from the days of rows and rows of amplifiers, tuners, TVs, and DVDs plopped down on long shelves with little more than a price tag to explain the differences. Women value understanding how a product will fit into her life. If you can show her how it will look in her living room, you’re halfway there.

It gives women a memorable experience. Women enjoy retail environments that invite discovery, and this prototype plays perfectly to that natural curiosity.

It acknowledges that women are just as likely as men to be early adopters of technology.

And my bet is that it’s going to be a big success.

Women Execs and the Bottom Line

Here’s a question for you. If women consumers are the primary decision-makers, and if more and more women are earning their MBAs and proving themselves in their respective companies, why aren’t there more women in the CEO seat?

There are, of course, the famous few. Meg Whitman of eBay, Andrea Jung of Avon, Shelley Lazarus of Ogilvy & Mather, Brenda Barnes of Sara Lee and the recently dethroned Carly Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard.

Even in the United States Congress, there are only 74 female members.

But consider a recent study that compared Fortune 500 companies with large numbers of female executives and board members with those with scant female representation. Seems that the companies with higher female representation outperformed their counterparts by delivering a 34 percent higher average shareholder return.

Albertson’s, Inc., a major grocery store chain, tops the list for having the most women on its board – six of eleven members are women. According to the company, “Women have insight into our customers that no man, no matter how bright, no matter how hard working, can match. As we pursue a customer-focused approach to growth, the insight, knowledge and expertise of women is invaluable at every level of the organization.”

Is your company customer-focused? Is that focus reflected around the mahogany conference table?
Who’s the voice of your female customer at the highest levels of your company?

Three of Six - Word of Mouth principles

Welcome to day three of Word of Mouth.

We’ve been exploring how we can inspire people to talk about your product or service, something that women naturally do anyway. So if women are already talking to other women, how can we make sure they’re mentioning you?

Today, we’re looking at three strategies from Creating Consumer Evangelists, by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. (There are six total – for the first three, please refer to yesterday’s post).

• Create a community. When you start treating customers as people instead of transactions, something amazing happens. They start talking to each other. And they figure out that they have you in common. So guess what they talk about? Here’s one example: a telecom company sponsored a dinner of current and potential customers, seating some of each at the tables. There were no telecom company sales people at the event – only the company president. The existing customers ended up selling the service to the prospects. When you put people in the same room and help them talk with each other, the results can be astonishing. Women tend to spend time with other women. How are you helping your (female) customers talk with your (female) prospects?

• Bite size chunks. We all know that driving trial is HUGE. So, what can you give someone that will encourage them to buy the 24 oz. bottle or the other half of the matching set or the beach vacation? Take a look at what a major appliance company is doing in Atlanta. They’ve set up a retail location where people can come test the appliances by baking cookies or doing their laundry right there in the store. If you like what you experience, they’ll refer you to a dealer. They’ve given away no product, but a taste of what their product does. A little nibble and people want to taste more.

• Create a cause. Many companies have jumped on the cause marketing bandwagon, but few have done it wholeheartedly. A company must adopt a cause and live the cause. Otherwise, women will figure out quickly that the commitment is not genuine. But it’s not only linking up with a charitable cause. It’s figuring out the emotional core of the company. Apple Computers (love them!) doesn’t sell hardware and software – it sells the tools to unleash the creativity of people at their desktops (and now with the iPod, it’s not limited to the desktop!). Find a rallying cry for your company that speaks to the aspirations of your customers, and watch the work of mouth engine speed across the landscape.

So there. After three days of word of mouth, I hope you’re all talking about it with your colleagues. And, in the spirit of constant feedback, let us know how we’re doing and what topics you’d enjoy hearing about.

Got the religion?

Editor's note: Sorry for the long delay between posts the last week or so. I've been really, really, really sick with bubonic plague. Okay, it's bronchitis, but it's felt like the plague.

We’ve been talking about the power of word of mouth, and today we’re going to dive into one form of WOM called evangelist marketing. This phrase, made wildly popular by authors Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba in their book Creating Customer Evangelists, describes consumers who are so deeply excited about their experience with your brand that they simply can’t help but tell others about it.

Personally, I’m a Krispy Kreme evangelist. I once overnighted a dozen doughnuts to my stockbroker in Boston because she’d never had a hot original glazed….and that, in my mind, was a crime. I own two t-shirts, three mugs, and a pair of boxer shorts emblazoned with tiny little doughnuts. My mother once thought that I ate them every day because I talked about them so much. (For the record, I eat maybe four a month, and savor every melt-in-your-mouth bite).

McConnell and Huba write that there are six basic ways to create evangelists. We’re going to address the first three today, the second three tomorrow. But first, you must have a truly remarkable product or service. There must be something for people to talk about before you ask them to talk. At its heart, word of mouth is honest.

• Get continuous customer feedback. Are you constantly talking with your customers and asking them what they love about you? What they would change? What they value most about you? Mark Cuban, the billionaire business mogul, sits in the cheap seats at Dallas Mavericks games (he owns the team) and advertises his personal email address so people can reach him. How empowering to think that the owner of a huge enterprise is interested in what I have to say!

• Share your knowledge. Give it away. MIT, the venerable educational ivory tower, shares class notes and lecture notes for its classes online. Result? Booming enrollment numbers and increased research opportunities. What can you give away that your customers will value?

• Reach the hubs. There are people out there, like Oprah, who are exceptionally well-connected and wield influence over others. When Oprah says that she loves a certain book or puts an item on her coveted O List, sales go through the roof. These hubs don’t have to be megacelebrities – they’re also community leaders, industry associations, etc. One survey I read stated that the most connected hubs are part of nine networks. Who are the influential people in your pool of customers that can spread the word?

What are you an evangelist about? What would you love to overhear one of your customers saying about you? How can you start the conversation?

The Buzz of the Hive

My partner and I have a saying. We need a stay at home wife. Since we both work, it’s tough finding the time to keep up with everything, so we came up with an imaginary maid. Her name is Consuela and we threaten to fire her all the time since she never shows up for work.

Turns out we’re not the only ones who are outsourcing our domestic chores. A recent study about women and home found that cleaning services, personal shoppers and home organizers are gaining in popularity among time-starved, multi-role women.

Women are also learning to do more with less. To slow down a bit. A majority of women (82%) agreed that it’s not the size of a house that matters. it’s the feeling or atmosphere inside.

And more and more of us are emerging from the post 9/11 cocoon we wove so tightly around ourselves. The new model is called Hiving, and it’s buzzing with activity. We’re inviting friends over for dinner, getting out into the garden, and buying huge hot tubs with plasma screen TVs built right in. One estimate says that Americans will spend about $70 billion on outdoor rooms and backyard upgrades.

So what implications does this information have for us as marketers? Several. One, design products that make her life easier to manage. Take the Swiffer, for instance. Two, attach emotions to your product and marketing message. She wants it to feel like home. Third, throw out the old assumptions that inside is inside and outside is outside. More and more, they are interchangeable.

How can you fit into the new concept of home?

Money, Money, Money

Let’s do something my polite Southern grandmother told me never to do. Let’s talk about money. Let’s talk about women and money to be exact. Fact is, women control more spending than the entire national economy of Japan. For those of who don’t know that number right offhand, that’s $14 trillion.

Over the last 20 years, women’s income has climbed 63% while men’s has eeked up a paltry 0.6%. That’s largely due to the influx of women into the workplace. Today, more than 60% of women work – that’s around 151 million women, thank you very much.

So where are all these well-paid women coming from? Graduate school, baby. Women are half the class at law school, medical school and business school.

In more than half of all American homes, it’s women who bring home more bacon than their male counterparts. And in a quarter of American homes, there is no male counterpart – single women bring home all of the bacon as well as the beef and chicken.

But women are doing more than working for their money. They’re also inheriting it. Women already control more than half of the country’s personal wealth and comprise 43% of individuals with assets more than $500,000. On top of that, Boomers are inheriting record amounts of money from their penny-pinching parents in the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth EVER. And, since women live an average of seven years longer than men, these same well-heeled women will also inherit from their husbands.

Still think that women don’t need to worry their pretty little heads about money? Still think there’s no need to market to women? There are 14 trillion reasons why you might want to reconsider.