I feel like a Russian doll. I get smaller and smaller as the testosterone in the boardroom gets bigger and bigger. I tell myself I am a confident woman yet the environment I am in makes me feel I must change my persona and adapt to my ‘male’ surroundings. I must cut across people when they speak. I must hammer my point home with authority. I must emit an odour of superiority. I must show the world I am King. After all, this is advertising. ‘Cojones’ are the order of the day.

So many women behave like men in the Boardroom in advertising agencies. They feel they must emulate men to be successful. Many of the senior women I work with are not women I would aspire to be like. More like men in drag. This lack of appeal is one of the reasons why only 6% of women make up company board members in the UK compared to a directive in Norway where 40% of all board members have to be female. The reason Norway has chosen this approach is that a boardroom with women on it, improves turnover and attracts more talented women.

I want to propose a new style of Boardroom where women can openly use the traits they have: femininity, intimacy and authenticity. To create an agenda that is open, transparent and supportive. The Boardroom should not be a place for corporate politics but a place for productive intimate business.

Gestalt talks about how boards of directors tend to operate in ways that seek to minimise ineffectiveness. Trevor J Bentley, in relation to Gestalt, says

“Relationships on boards are often tenuous, superficial and dishonest. They are quite often transitory subsytems of people who support each other out of personal interest. The best that most boards achieve often through share option schemes, is to align the self interest of individual directors with the interest of shareholders. This approach tends to create a short term price focus that is nearly always to the detriment of the long-term sustainable growth and well-being of the business.”

This pretty much sums up why we are in a financial crisis. A group of money hungry men had short term personal goals of becoming richer without thinking about the long term consequences of their actions.

I want a far more ‘intimate’ and ‘authentic’ environment: Bentley states that there are 2 parts to working in an intimate system.

The first is knowing what I am prepared to offer others is what they want.

The second is knowing that what I want is what others are prepared to offer me.

My experience is that most people in meetings are never clear or open about what they want. It takes a series of long pointless and frankly ineffective meetings before you start to find out the other party actually wants. You have to “play the game” (countless times I have been asked to “play the game”-each time I am told this, I feel myself revert back to my Russian doll).

Once you are finally clear about what the other parties want, the quality of contact increases and people relate to each other with a degree of authenticity. Its a bit like when you have the frank conversation with your new boyfriend about what you want from the relationship. Once the hazy fog of second guessing has been lifted and everything is so much simpler and more enjoyable.

Today in the boardroom in agencies, I watch women emulate men, leaving the men to dictate the rules of the boardroom. Women must be prepared to use their feminine skills in a productive way and men must be prepared to build cultures that thrive on diversity and tolerance not conformity.

More senior women will attract talented women. Women want role models and female mentors that can support and nurture them. Not to mention, women will design products for other women. And when according to the New York Times, 80% of all products are bought by women, this is a profitable and commercially sound strategy.

Jerry yang, Yahoo’s ex chief exec announced that the advertising industry was facing the toughest downturn in decades. The age of extravagance is gone. The age of the hangover is here. No more big marketing budgets with money to trial and test cool ideas. Its about ROI. Its about bold, strong brands having a clear positioning. Tough times need solid, focused leadership, a lesson that Woolworths learnt the hard way.

Napoleon declared the essence of strategy is sacrifice. Never has this been more true than in the current climate. And the sacrifice should be allocating marketing spend to men- a well saturated market. Lad’s mags are already pregnant with tech-brands competing for their attention. Women are the financial opportunity and Jupiter estimate marketers are missing out on £0.5billion by not marketing to women.

Out of every 10 gadgets, 4 are bought by women. And no before you ask we are not talking about fridges and washing machines. More women than men play games between the age of 24-35 than men now And we are not just talking the Sims. World of Warcraft now has 50% female players.

The research I conducted with Jupiter highlighted (now Forrester), ownership is on a par with men in most categories. Couple that with the fastest growing segment on social networks is married women with children. And according to an N-vision survey, December 2008, approx 40% of women are transacting on the Internet (ie spending money rather than just using the Internet for communication, information and entertainment) compared to 30% of men. Hence, Women are no longer a niche audience – they are the budget-holders and drivers of growth.

The editor of marie claire is right when she says:

“When it comes to tech brands and women, technology companies are in the same place the cars industry was 20 years ago.”

With the exception of Nintendo and it’s Wii, Apple, no other brand is talking the female language. I agree with Hilary Chilura when she says:

“Like nervous teenage boys at a junior high-school dance, tech marketers haven’t figured out how to talk to women”.

Ask any family who was in charge of buying the Christmas gifts, and you’ll find out its women not men. Women are not only buying technology for themselves, but as the Chief Household Officer, are buying for kids, husband, gran and friends. Women are in charge of the house, but more importantly are in charge of the living room (see Battle for the Living Room) where many of the technology lives: PVR, console, HD TV…. In my house, its my husband who lives in ‘his’ world but its me who lives in the ‘real’ world. I am deciding what we should cut back on, how much we can save and what we will buy when it comes to technology.

If tech brands want to be successful, they should focus on women at the expense of men. Women are no longer ‘the Second Sex. ‘ Rather the most profitable sex.

Nintendo’s new DS will feature a camera, possibly a bigger pair of screens (both of which will be touch-sensitive) and a slightly improved WiFi system. I’d expect at least one surprise – my bet will be some kind of motion-sensor.

Naturally some people will be disappointed that the platform’s features will still be low-end or that it does not include a free magic-pony, but its hard to please everyone. Nintendo have always been very good at incremental updates. This will be another money-maker.

It probably will not look as good as this Gizmodo.com mock-up, but I share their desire for something that looks less like a toy.

The real question I have is not whether people will buy it, but whether people will carry it – the electronics market is flooded with pocket-sized devices. And the more interesting question is what would you leave behind in order to take your DS with you? Would you leave behind your digital camera because Nintendo have built one into the DS? If the new DS had a good enough web-browser might you leave behind your laptop? What’s the hierarchy of technologies for your handbag?

Ultimately it comes down to who your competition is. Whilst most brands look to their immediate competition, the woman on the street does not view her competition by category. Nintendo will be competing with the obvious rival Sony but will also be competing with everything in a women’s handbag: Keys, Digi-cam, Purses, Phones, Laptops, Music-Players, Sunglasses and make-up.

Jan Chipchase has done some interesting work in this area. Keys, cash and mobile phone are considered essentials irrespective of culture and gender. Keys and money provide access to shelter, food and warmth whilst the phone enables convenient communication with someone who can provide access to these. Forgetting these when shifting to one situation to the other is the most critical thing for most people.

I often pick up my overfilled handbag and leave stuff out and my DS is usually the one that gets eliminated first. Then in order: my mini laptop, camera, paper notebook, any baby toys/dummies and finally paracetamol. My Blackberry, purse and make-up (vain I know) are the things I take everywhere.

Whilst Nokia and Apple have been banking on the importance the phone hence turning it into a hand held gaming platform, there’s an interesting piece of work to be done understanding which items women are prepared to be loyal to and those they are prepared to abandon.

As we begin the quest for loyalty beyond reason, the battle of the handbags begins.

What’s in your handbag and what’s your handbag hierarchy?

A recent article suggests that the number of girls playing games has increased to 41% in Australia. The article argues – as we have pointed out many times in this blog – that stores selling video games and makers of video games are not set up to please female customers. It is really surprising that companies have not realised that almost half of their customers are female.

The study also highlighted that women playing video games in Australia are now on average 28 years old, up from 24 years. The trend suggests that games of the future are not only as likely to be male as female but also older.

The article suggests that one way of responding to the increasingly female audience of video games is through having more female game developers. The figure the article quotes for Australia is 5% while the international figure stands at 12%. The picture is similar in computer science courses at universities and colleges where women make up only about 10% in the US as an article in USA Today states.

This is supported by the fact that the few women who enter science and technology professions are also likely to drop out as a recent contribution of Silvia Ann Hewlett in the FT claimed (I will review her Harvard Business Review article here when it is published next month). Hewlett argues that as many as 52% of highly qualified women in science, technology and engineering drop out due to work pressures and a hostile environment.

The IT industry can ill afford training few women and losing them in disproportionate numbers later on. However with more women actively using technology and playing computer games, one can hope that the image of technology jobs might change slowly.

On Wednesday I read an article in the Metro called ‘’. The article is based on a report produced by Gamesvision. This report claims that 23% of people aged between six and 55 play computer games and 41% of gamers are female. These are encouraging statistics.

The article argues that this is due to more women who join the labour force and program and develop games. The games have in turn become more realistic. This means that the busty Lara Croft went from a 36DD to a 36B. Well, she still fulfils the ideal of slender femininity and has still a perfect wais to hip ratio. However Lara Croft is now a bit more realistic than before.

This makes business sense for game producers. If they alienate half of their potential consumer market, it does not make sense to have stereotypical representations of women. Having more women programming games together with consumer demand might thus change the face of gaming or rather the representation of female characters.

A fascinating topic. The university of Warwick will host a conference on Women in Gaming from 10 to 12 September.

Nokia has finally unwrapped its N-Gage mobile games service globally, allowing users of their newer smart-phones to download some half-decent games for their mobile phones and providing a real alternative to console and PC gaming.

Mobile gaming is on the increase: Its a great way to attract ‘snack’ or casual gamers, of which a large proportion are women. I have seen many women on the bus, train who play games on their phones. I do not think these women would ever be seen in public playing a DS or a PSP – playing a game on the phone is more respectable (even if it’s that boring breakout game on the BlackBerry).

Travel time is ‘dead’ time for women – they don’t have the same guilt and feeling of indulgence that they would have if they were to ‘surrender’ an hour of valuable home time to play Mario Galaxy. Home time is too valuable, and this is why the hand-held gaming market is skewed towards female gamers.

The genius of N-gage is that Nokia have delivered a fully portable game-platform that allows players to try before they buy. Like the XBox Live Arcade at home, this feature of the new N-Gage takes the risk out of choosing games, as buyers are safe in theknowledge that they will not be mis-sold. You always know what you are going to get before you hand over your cash.

The new N-Gage games are just downloads. There is no need to visit a game store (hooray as they are not exactly inviting to women) and there are no game packs to be lost or damaged.

According to Mintel data (2007), women are far less likely to spend money on gaming, particularly on a subscription model that dominates the hardcore gamer market. Nokia have sensibly adopted a pricing model similar to Nintendo’s Wii, that is once bought games are free to play online.

While I think Nokia have got much of this right, it’s still going to be a tough sell: The Nintendo DS is the hottest selling games platform right now, and shelves are literally bulging with many lifetimes worth of casual games.

Having the N-Gage platform pre-installed on all future phones will make a big difference – however even then I think Nokia will need to advertise heavily in order to help women understand the clever features that are buried deep within their phone’s memory.

I bought an Xbox a few months ago and I was quite excited at the prospect of having it in my living room. My husband enthused that it was ‘something for the living room to watch films on’ which would replace our DVD player’ – this seemed like an an interesting prospect. Being a film aficionado, having lots of new films/TV shows and video on demand is very appealing.

The first thing I noticed about the Xbox Marketplace was the selection of films are very limited and not that appealing to women. Its mainly the hardcore men titles with the occasional “chick-flick” (Miss Congeniality) thrown in for good measure. The selection is designed to appeal to adolescent boys – there’s a surplus of action films and high-octane thrillers. The movie store was a dissapointment, but what about all the other content that Microsoft sold us on?

There’s a TV and short-films section which mainly consists of pop videos and the kid’s show “Viva Piniata”. These are the same pop videos you can watch for free on any of the Freeview music channels, except in the Xbox marketplace you pay a few pounds for the same content you can get for free on TV or via YouTube.

The value of these official downloads is further diluted by XBox marketplace’s vague licensing: Downloaded movies must be watched within a week of the original download or else the movie becomes unplayable. Likewise a move which has been started must be finished within 24 hours before it expires and becomes unplayable. Does the same restriction that applies to a Will Smith movie also apply to a Britney pop video? Who knows – I wasnt going to waste money trying to find out!

On the subject of payment once again the Xbox marketplace is confusing: Microsoft have decided to invent their own currency which is neither Pounds, Dollars nor any other familiar currency but “Microsoft Points” whose rate is arbitrarily set by Microsoft. This means we never really know how much an Xbox marketplace costs until we check the latest points to pounds exchange rate. How much money is two-hundred Microsoft points? I’ve absolutely no idea and I doubt that most Xbox 360 owners do either.

So far, I haven’t downloaded a single paid-for film – that’s only partly because Microsoft’s commercial media proposition is a failure. The other reason is that the XBox 360 can play XviD and DivX files – these files can be downloaded from a huge selection without payment and then kept forever (or until I decide to delete it). The XBox 360 is such a superb movie player that nobody who knows this would ever be tempted to waste money on the sub-standard good in the Xbox Marketplace.

This is a massive missed financial opportunity for Microsoft. The Lady Geeks I spoke to were similarly impressed by the XBox 360′s media player abilities but felt let down by the range and restrictions of the marketplace. Ultimately YouTube and illegal downloads offered a better value proposition than Microsoft’s half-hearted offering. Microsoft should offer a wider selection of movies which appeal to more than just the traditional adolescent male gamer, plus they should price their downloads in real money rather than confusing points. These are all modest changes (compared to the technical difficulty of building the system in the first place) that would dramatically extend the Xbox 360′s appeal to women.

As “Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain” hits the Five million mark in unit sales at the begining of this year and “More Brain Training” gets to 2.8 million units, I am wondering if the world has gone mad…

… And then I see this story in the Times; Primary school children are being encouraged to play Brain Training in class to boost their “cognitive skills”. I have no problem with girls or boys playing games. But Brain Training is one of the dumbest games in the whole DS catalogue, and despite it’s maker’s claims I think it’s the least likely to boost any kind of skills.

I have played Brain Training. Its very basic and repetitive – I’d barely even qualify it as a game. Its mind blowingly dull. I can think of a number of DS games that have a greater potential to challenge a young mind.

Brain Training challenges players to quickly answer primary-school grade arithmetic puzzles. The puzzles in Zelda or the strategic challenge of Advance Wars both encourage a more useful kind of logical thinking than Brain Training requires. All Brain Training seems to do is rote-learning of basic arithmetic.

I teach my nieces and nephews French. At school, they learn to recite the numbers. They can count up from one, but they cannot translate simple random numbers. That’s just one example of how rote-learning does not work. It’s a dumb, boring and ineffective way to study.

I think we should applaud Nintendo for recognizing a role for their technology in the classroom – but surely our children deserve something better than this?

As if we needed another video game for girls “Guppylife for girls”

The purpose of the game is to look after the furry inhabitants of the planet; what an innovation! I do agree with Alice though, the design looks great but please, its bad enough creating another video game for girls (have a look in any games store at the DS titles and you will agree) but to brand it “for girls” is not the best way to market it. Women and girls are put off by anything which overtly targets them as women. Not only does it put women off, but as one Lady Geek told me “just because I have breasts, doesn’t mean I gravitate to other breasts.” Nicely put i think. Apple never brought out the ipod and marketed it “for girls” but they did alot of research into understanding what women would respond to. Sony Bravia are positioning their TV as “a piece of furniture” not as “a piece of furniture for women” but their strategy is very much to appeal to the female market. The opportunity is for brands to understand the subtleties of connecting with women. Its complicated. Women are complicated. And an overt “girls only” approach just ain’t going to cut it.