Email : belinda@ladygeek.org.uk
Feb
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.
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Ah well, all this is true, of course, and who could possibly know better than Sean, who so famously fell foul of the media (not to mention the vast majority of TV viewers) when he admitted that his own interaction with the fairer sex involved the occasional “slap” now and then. Only when strictly necesary, obviously. And for her own good, mind you…
That, of course, was back in the 80s, and one would hope that intergender communication might have come along a little since then. Or, in the words of Miss Moneypenny, that James might have “come good on all his double entendres”, at the very least.
But, certainly, as multimedia platforms pervade more and more aspects of life, both in professional forum as well as homelife, the absence of selectively specific, and uncondescending tech marketing, equates to an extraordinary failure to tap into a huge potential market audience.
Technology has a licence to thrill, but presently it is guilty of a crital failure to fulfill.