Marketing the Physical & Virtual Experience

We seldom leverage our vast knowledge and experience many times choosing (yes choosing because we still are in control) or opting to react rather to stop, think and act.

If we assume that one of the advantages of being a small company is the flexibility and speed at which you can get products or services to market, often with a high degree of innovation involved (depending on the internal level of entrepreneurship), then we can also assume that with brand houses such as Procter & Gamble and Unilever, you should be able to leverage the wealth and knowledge available from within – does that happen though? It’s very much like the sales & marketing war that’s been raging ever since they were invented. Why?

I'd always heard that great executives should always alocate 1-2 hours per day to read an get informed. The reality, is that like many, I was always TOO busy... But now there's NO excuse! You can now download NewsGator that runs in your Outlook 2003 - so if you aren't too busy for e-mails you can't be too busy for blogs. It's actually like tapping into the brains of all the people that could answer all your queries, all your fears and in the meantime you'll stumble across great ideas and sometimes quite inspiring stuff.

Blogging really kicks off when you start to interact with your consumers. We moved our web pages for Paradise Garage to the blog format and we jumped from 250 unique visits to over 1000 but the greatest move only started to take effect today as we replied to our first comments and not very favorable at that - but they were actually very tuned in. They should be - they are straight from our customers!

It's the beginning but it's all about gaining their trust and we've sat for hours looking at a comment wondering whether to remove it - once we had some basic rules - applied to life - opinios are fine, personal attacks not - it was easy. I was VERY surprised however to see these stats on the post in eMarketer.com titled "Executives Not Quite Hot to Blog".

The Experiential Marketing Summit introduced for the first year an all new Women in Marketing group - a sisterhood designed to provide information and networking opportunities in the event industry. Still need convincing? - it's a slow change but an exponential one and those onboard now can reap the rewards.

I asked, kind of pleaded actually, to be allowed in the summit because of my interest in marketing to women - my quest. When I received a No! - I have to admit I was shocked - then angry - then slightly paranoid. What was going to happen in there that I could not get access to? It had arrived - the new reality - women in control and not much we can do about it.

Jen Fitzpatrick, Engineering Director, has represented Google at many events for women and having been asked the pretty much the same thing, and working for a company that can do these things, what better way to show women what working for Google is really like…
[watch the video]

Google, like many few companies, looks at the detail – every bit of it. Whereas most companies would be proud to have a recruitment video with this feel to it, Google go further. The following is the accompanying explanation of why they made the video and at the end even get to pitch their Anita Borg Scholarships – all through “the ever so natural, ever so pure” Ms. Fitzpatrick. I think it’s slick but highly effective and I guess I’m jealous because I have no idea of what it’s like for a man to work at Google…

If you ever wondered what makes companies great - its people! And want to know how to attract, recruit and KEEP the very best people? Watch this video, pack your stuff at work and go find a real job. If you are a recruiter - shame on you. Pack YOUR bags and give your job up to someone more passionate about people.

I've always hated hearing the phrase "people are our biggest asset" for three reasons:

1. It was usually used by those who had little to no regard for the people working for them - their responsibility under their watch - and what a responsibility

2. Assets are static - they are buildings, they are machinery and they are not people - people can be a financial plus, do have a huge value but they are everything by static.

3. Ass-it... need I say more (totally unnecessary but something urges me on to leave point 3 - so there).

Having watched the Google Recruitment Video - what a SEXY place to work -live - work - whatever they do there...

Having spoken to many people regarding marketing TO women, I realised I wouldn’t get very far without making it blatantly obvious that this was not a man vs. woman thingy. The conversation always ended up within the realms of women having babies, taking time off, trying to come back etc, etc.

For me as a man, learning about women, is actually quite refreshing and necessary for just about aspect of my life – I have 3 daughters which brings my household population (including grandmother, one nanny and one [female] housekeeper) to 12.5% male (i.e. ME) and 87.5% female (THEM) – so you see my motivation is actually a lot more than good business sense.

To market to women, we obviously have to understand them and listening to women talking about women (great concepts are ALWAYS simple and obvious) gives us pretty much all the insight we need – to begin.

So every time I thought they were gossiping, they were actually connecting. I knew that it was important to look at all the details – [life is made up of details] – what I didn’t realize is that my brand had to have this much more detail – emotional appeal, aspirational appeal, and character – not in the sense that I was thinking but more in the women’s sense – the holistic view. Women see everything. They see all the detail. Men walk into a shop buy and leave, women talk, feel, listen – they connect. Once you realize this, nothing else will ever be the same.

If you are still not 110% convinced that this works – just go to www.oprah.com . I didn’t get it before – I do now. Oprah became the female spokeswoman – not for men but for women. She was the first one to truly share all the day to day worries, happiness, curiosities that women have (had) and will have.

This reminded me of a few months ago when I caught a ‘Poo’ Expert explaining the ideal size, colour and odour of our ‘poo’. Needless to say she made a whole program about it – I can’t remember as I was too busy trying to understand who watches Oprah. Well Billions do! She connected with women, she bonds with them emotionally – cries, laughs, stands up to influential people (as if they exist when in her presence) such as Hilfiger when he decided to make public his thoughts on clothing and race.

I watched Hurricane Katrina every day. I do get hooked into the emotional side of tragedy – it helps he understand how lucky I really am and how good I have it. Complain? Of what? Thousands of people had lost their houses, family members and friends. They were scared, isolated, ignored and in a situation worse than Katrina itself. I saw Oprah go there. My cynicism was replaced by awe when I saw all of those people in need of water, food and answers look up to her as she blasted out on the sound system “Hello. I am Oprah and I’m here to let you know…”

Whenever someone tells me it's not going to work, something inside me triggers an overwhelming desire to do it. I can't help it - I just get bored doing what everybody else is doing. Not to be different just for the sakes of being different. I hate the concept of tweaking and I've always hated it. Both my father and my brother are Engineers and from a very young age I always associated engineering with squareness, tweaking, fine tuning and rules. As you've probably guessed I am not an Engineer nor do I presently have that same vision of engineering [political correctness] - I have friends who are engineers...

Re-imagine! By Tom Peters - I bought the book and heard the audible version in my car to work everyday. It really got be going especially the section on marketing for women. I thought about it for a week and when I started to analyse our marketing and the fact that we had gone from a 60% female customer base to nearly 40% I knew this was going to be exciting.

What I never realised was how polemic a subject it was. I looked for my most "female" member of staff to sell her on the idea that we were going to have a section on our web page that catered to women - written by women. She would not only understand but would jump at the idea. 

When I explained to her with great enthusiasm our new journey, she looked puzzled. I offered up the two examples:

1. When you go to the Coliseum in Lisbon (applicable to most other public places), during the interval, men can do their thing in the toilets, go stock up on food drink and even smoke a cigarette, all in the time that women have to stay in the queue to the rest rooms and wait their turn leaving little time to do much more - smoking in the queue usually helps them at least accomplish two things.

2. When you go to buy a car, women have different objectives in their purchase then men, so why do they have to either get the binary facts or the other extreme of how useful it is for shopping.

She looked even more bewildered. "But we spend more time in the toilet talking about our problems and rearranging our make up and as for buying a car - I had no problem last time when I bought my car - I took my brother with me". I was gob smacked! Now I REALLY had to do this. I just never thought the problem was also from within.

Cathy Mosca from Tom Peters reiterated this to me in that she understands "the restroom parity issue" claiming to have to "plan a theatre-going experience to avoid the problem, especially when I visit New York City. Don't consume much liquid at dinner, use the facilities at the dinner place rather than get in line at the theatre, etc." 

It's actually a very simple logistics issue - the ladies' room needs much more space than the men's room - probably needs to be designed by a woman instead of a man too. It leaves me wondering about two things:

a. why do women put up with it? And

b. what is the true impact of this on ticket sales, repeat visits and bar sales?

[By the way in the Lisbon Coliseum, you could use half the bar area for ladies' restrooms because it's always half full/empty - the other half of the potential customers, the ladies, are congested in the hallway waiting to use the restrooms]