At first when I heard about the Microsoft “I am a PC” ads, my first instinct was that the world’s biggest computer company should not feel the need to respond to Apple’s “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” ads which had aired more than six months ago. It signified that not only that they gave a damn but also they were likely to loose control of the debate.

After seeing the hundreth Apple ad mimicking and stereotyping the Microsoft user, I started to see Apple as the bully of the playground. Poking fun at the perceived ‘not so cool’ Microsoft user was like the ‘IT’ girl in the playground with the cooler nike trainers picking on others. Microsoft approached me to be in the I am a PC – you can see my VT here:

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I wanted to do it not only to get the Lady Geek brand out there but more importantly, I am tired of the unconditional and undeserving love people have for the Apple brand. The original reason for the Apple brand being so desired, was clearly a great product but also this idea of being the underdog and a brand for the non conformist.

With Apple’s growth rate surpassing Microsoft, has Apple become the brand for the lazy conformist? The person who can’t think past the mac tax and see the new sexier brands like asus and acer chomping at their heels? Is Apple’s behaviour precisely the behaviour of that which they criticized Microsoft? Have the tables turned? And ultimately, do the I am PC ads successfully connect women with Microsoft?

I showed some Lady Geeks the ads and they got an encouraging response. With comments from ‘I love the stories behind the technology’ to ‘it made me reappraise the role of technology in my life.’ If its objective is to build the brand ethos first and foremost, its clearly successful. It has managed to move away from the technology and product specs and talk about what technology means to women and what they care about. It achieves Malcolm Gladwell’s fundamental question of what can Microsoft mean to people over and above being a software developer.

But if its aim was to get people to reappraise Vista, then there is a fundamental problem to solve. I asked my female colleagues at work what they knew about Microsoft Vista. All are tech literate, bright and articulate 20 and 30 somethings. I got answers ranging from ‘is it a credit card?’ to ‘something on my computer but I am not sure what.’ The majority of women don’t know or care what an operating system is, and could not identify Microsoft’s flagship product as an example of an operating system.

Meanwhile Apple seem to have no difficulty communicating the value of OSX – it seems as if every insignificant widget is trumpeted as if it were the greatest development in computing since the invention of the mouse. Apple are fortunate to have fans who create a reality-distortion field through which apple’s products appear magical – and under the same lens Microsoft’s products are by definition the exact opposite.

Lovers generally tend to overlook the faults in the object of their affection and Apple have been very good at building that kind of affection amongst their audience. Microsoft have never invested in building any kind of emotional connection with their audience – which is what makes their new campaign such a significant departure from their normal product-focused, conservative advertising. With the imminent launch of Windows 7, Microsoft claim to have fixed the technical issues that disappointed so many Vista users – now the goal should be to fix the marketing so that women understand and care about this thing that Microsoft have made, and understand how how it enhances their life.

Ok, it wasn’t hell. But it certainly wasn’t heaven; it was something in between. I was shopping for a new digital ‘point and shoot‘ camera. Like many women, I didn’t have much time to research different options online (Lady Geek research found than men research technology purchases more than women) so, like most female shoppers I came to my “retail experience” with no preconceptions. Since it was the only shop likely to be open on a Sunday morning, I went for Curry’s.

I wanted a camera indulge in my fantasy of being an undercover researcher. I told Vinesh, the shop assistant, I needed something small within the £100-150 price range, light and easy to use. Vinesh was quite informed and didn’t make me feel dumb or ‘female’, explaining that the type of lens was more important than the pixels. He showed me the Panasonic Lumix and the Sony CyberShot – The obvious choices – the most reputable brands.

Vinesh failed to ask me a fundamental question: whether I wanted to use the camera mainly indoors or in sunlight which I think is pivotal to anyone’s choice when buying a camera. I told him I’d heard about Fujifilm’s cameras being particuarly suitable for the kind of indoor photography that interests me.

He agreed; I ended up buying the Fuji.

I received my camera in a drab box.

I rummaged inside the box for the soft-case so I could at least protect my exciting new purchase. I was dismayed to find out that having paid two hundred quid for a camera it did not come with the most essential of accessories. I felt let down. It was as if I had just had a trip to the dentist. I was relieved it was all over. It wasn’t exciting. It certainly was not fun.

Compare this to the buzz I got when I bought a new dress the week before. I could hardly contain my excitement in the shop. I felt like a small child in a candy store. I got a posh bag. My dress was wrapped in tissue paper and smelt expensive. I even got a free magazine for ‘valued’ customers. It felt luxurious.

I love my camera. I love what I can do with it. Its seems pretty intuitive to use. My excitement comes from using the product. But what could have been an ‘experience’ to be enjoyed and savoured post-purchase was one easily forgotten.

If tech brands are asking women to divert their spend to technology, they need to provide a sensual, tactile and intimate experience with marketing that appeals to their senses as well as their purses.

Part of this is the whole experience, which includes not only the retail environment but the unveiling and ritualistic opening of the product when you get it home and peripherals are a big part of “making something my own” for women (The Japanese are particularly good at recognising this market.) So whilst I won’t rush to go technology shopping for a while, I am keen to get taking some good pictures for this blog.

We’ve just completed some interesting work about people’s relationship with technology.

Classical research theory assumes that our decisions are based on conscious, rational thought or reflex ‘snap’ decisions. These days most psychotherapists have come to the conclusion that the truth is somewhat more complex: decisions are often post-rationalisations and snap decisions are backed up by a lifetime of knowledge.

Our client had previously spent thousands of pounds on ‘traditional’ research which failed to reveal anything substantially new. The planner, had been traveling around the country, night after night, suburb after suburb and was exhausted at the prospect of doing yet more research.

We decided to change our approach and run an ethnographic style study.  We assembled our ‘SWAT’ team of researchers, each was sent to ‘live’ with the subjects of our research: We spent time in their homes. We went shopping with couples buying technology and ‘hung out’ with families, observing their relationship with household technology.

The study revealed a great deal of new insights about how gender influences technology use, for example men often have their PC/Laptop in their ‘den’- its a retreat, its a hide out, a solace place where they can internalize ‘their’ time.  We saw how women use their PC/laptop in the heart of the home. Many women used their laptops to manage the household and ensure things run smoothly: Its used to make sure the shopping online is ordered, help the kids with their homework and keep them in touch with their friends via social networking sites.

We watched how couples shop for technology and the very different roles they take:  Women tend to be more concerned about how the device will ‘fit’ into their home.  Whether it will be a beautiful addition to the home, not just in terms of design but in functionality and ergonomics. This is a motive that so many tech-brands misinterpret as “women only care what the technology looks like“. Men tend to want to make sure that what they are buying is “right” piece of kit.  Not in terms of their home but more in terms of what it will purportedly do.

While the differences are obvious, what unifies men and women is that buying technology is an emotional decision: This does not mean that it is irrational. An emotional decision can be very rational as our feelings are informed by a lifetime of experience. As the neuroscientist, David Lewis states,

“Our conscious is a bit like a PR company.  It justifies our decisions on an intellectual level and seeks to explain behavior that feels right“

The ‘PR’ bit is what ‘respondents’ had been articulating in the focus group.  The planner told me,

“I realized that for 2 years people had been lying to us in focus groups.  Not because they deliberately set out to lie but because they either couldn’t articulate it or were too embarrassed to tell us what they really felt about buying technology”

There are 3 types of decision making.  The first type is the truly instant decision. The second type are those which appear instant but actually access our vast network of experiences, however we often refer to them as based on our ‘gut instinct.’ The last type is the mathematical way to approach them which is cost benefit analysis. Received wisdom has it that the vast majority of choices are of the first and third type, however the more I observe people in the act of making choices the more I realize that the way people shop is neither frivolous nor analytical but something in between.

As Sartre stated, we are our choices.  If only technology companies spent a little more time trying to understand why we do what we do on a deeper level, then maybe so many women wouldn’t feel so frustrated and bored when it comes to buying technology.

Although we are not just a tech review site, as this is a niche well-served by thousands of opinionated man geeks whose mission is to describe tech objects in the most excruciating detail possible, I want to briefly attempt to describe the newish Nokia BH-503 headset…

Since this is just a headset, it does essentially the exact same thing as every other bluetooth headset ever made, just a little bit better and in stereo. Sounds boring eh?

What’s remarkable is not the engineering that’s gone into this product but that it’s taken the world’s finest electronic companies over three years to come up with the something that “just works”. It’s an understatement to claim that the market is flooded with crappy and non-functional bluetooth products. The overwhelming majority of Bluetooth gadgets are barely-functional trash.

This year Nokia seem to have got it right for the first time – they’ve built a headset on which I can listen to music on without annoying cut-outs. They’ve figured out that when a connection fails, the smart thing to do is automatically re-connect. They’ve managed to make a product that can withstand a few months of knock-about use without breaking.

Best of all they’ve made it so you can actually have a phone conversation a feature which previous generations of headset seemed to fail, despite arguably being the raison d’etre for a bluetooth headset.  And the best thing about this is that it liberates me to do other stuff while on the phone.

Bottom Line: It’s the first Stereo bluetooth headset I’ve owned that sounds good, does not make me look like I’ve escaped from the local mental institution, does not instantly fall-apart and is approximately as reliable as the old sort (you know the ones with wires).

I’ve written about my Asus EEE. I love it. Its cute. Lilliputian. Compact. And most importantly it fits perfectly into my handbag.

The Asus EEE has taken the market by storm (PC Pro, Gizmodo). I’ve already put my order in for the next upgrade. Even Dell have recognized that the micro-laptop is the next big – their Dell E series looks like a flattering imitation of the original EEE. Dell seems to have gone all out for copying asus, even down to bundling a Linux operating system instead of Microsoft Windows which has been a compulsory feature of just about evrery Dell sold in the last ten years.

There’s even a new name for this kind of dinky laptop: “mobile internet device” or (MID):

But not everybody loves these new gadgets: One female friend of mine claimed that she loved it, but “at the end of the day, still not a mac.” I explained that it was a 10th of the price of a Mac and not ten times inferior from a performance and usability perspective. But what ever I said, I could not convince Sarah. To quote Carrie Bradshaw,

“this was not about logic, it was about LOVE.”

(cheesy quote I know but reflective of the whole film)

If ever a brand was about pure unadulterated love, its Apple. Its a the world’s 7th most valuable brand, worth a staggering $55billion. Its is a Lovemark for so many people. Sarah anthropomorphised her mac in no uncertain terms;

“My Baby is old now. Arthritis has worked her spine for a while, but she is still going strong. Her memory is remarkably good considering all the strange things I have introduced her to. I love my Baby.. I can’t be mad at her. When her metallic voice speaks out “It Is _Not_ My Fault…” all I can say is: “I know, Baby… I know. I gave you a bad command, and I’m sorry. Let’s try again.”

Whilst I agree with our CEO, people are 20% rational and 80% emotional, I am left feeling that the love for Apple seems misplaced when there are so many better or equitable products on the market.

But perhaps that’s part of the joy of owning the EEE – the technology you buy makes a statement. With the near ubiquity of Apple’s products in the creative industries, these high-end laptops are no longer about “Thinking Different” and are more a sign of conformity to cultural norms, wheras carrying around an unusual laptop, especially one which runs entirely different software marks you as an outsider. Those rival icons of computing, the Thinkpad and the Powerbook (or Mac Book) represent your tech-tribal affiliation.

I feel emotional about my Asus. I feel emotional about my Tangent Quattro Internet radio. I feel emotional about my Blackberry. But show me a better, cooler, smaller, cheaper, more useful product and I will be promiscuous. With technology changing so fast, can we afford to be loyal to one particular brand. And quite frankly is any brand (even Apple) brand deserving of such unconditional love?

As a  techno-utopian, I believe technology brings people together rather than disconnecting them.

Received wisdom would have us believe that technology breeds isolation:  I’ve lost count of the number of hysterical Daily Mail articles that warn us that computer-games are turning kids violent. As a child I was told that sitting too close to the TV would “make you go blind”. There’s a great deal of nonsense spoken about technology, and it’s often believed because many people consider technological progress to be the root evil of society.

When I think about how technology is used in my household, the HD TV is like a digital campfire which brings the whole family together to watch films, the Wii is a short burst of fun for my husband and I when the kids are in bed, Facebook connects me to a wider circle of friends that I wouldn’t have the time to see, and my mum and I listen to Woman’s Hour together on our new Wi Fi radio.

Not only is technology physically bringing people together through new shared experiences, its creating a new way of sharing an emotional experience albeit in some cases on different platforms and different devices.  The reactions and the emotions of the people with whom you are sharing the experience with is whats important.

This becomes ever more apparent with the shift towards mobile content sharing devices.   As Jan Chipchase shows with this photo of two Tokyoites – on the right of the photo engaged in the same task watching the same television program on their mobile phone each using their own device, with comments passed back and forth.   Whereas one screen can compromise the viewing experience, the same content can be shared and hence the same experience.

Yahoo has launched Yahoo Shine, a site for what Yahoo says is an “underrepresented demographic.” It will combine Yahoo’s food, astrology, and health, content with fashion, beauty, and parenting sections, stories from publishers like Conde Nast, Hearst, Rodale, and TIME, as well as original content. The site will feature blogs submitted by users, as well sections on work and money and tips for the home.

“We’re executing on Yahoo’s starting point strategy by ensuring that women who start their day with Yahoo! are offered a more relevant experience,” Scott Moore, senior VP and head of Yahoo Media.

All of this is music to my ears. I went on the site and was slightly disappointed with the reality. They do seem to have fallen into the usual traps of talking to women. The first advert that pops up is ‘Fancy Lingerie that you can afford.’ Everything on there was expected…from spring cleaning tips, to pregnancy, to fashion, to how to spend more time with your husband without the kids. I was hoping for something a bit different to the usual “women’s portal” rubbish.

I also searched hard and found no tech site or tech news which I think is a huge missed opportunity: As one lady commented, “really, yahoo? astrology, fashion, and beauty? this is sooo exciting for us gals. i’ll check it out tonight after i do the dishes. as long as my husband says it’s OK to use the computer.”

I wonder how sensible this strategy is: Portals were big news in the late 90′s when there was a clear need for the Internet companies to offer the average internet user a guide to the best of the ‘net – however a decade later the Internet has been transformed: Sites like Google Reader and Bloglines allow anybody to put together their own ‘portal’ with content increasingly selected from the diverse “bloggosphere” rather than major publishers like Conde Nast. Shine seems like an attempt to revive the popularity of big-brand content at a time when the trend is clearly against the publishers.

I think the Inquirer is a bit harsh when it states “Shine appears to be a shallow façade of a site, pretending to offer women something new, when it obviously doesn’t.” I wouldn’t go that far but my advice for Yahoo is to deliver on its vision of offering something new. Inspiring Chief Household Officers (I love this!) to enjoy technology is a good place to start.

 

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.