Monthly Archive for September, 2007

My Dirty Little Secret

Published on September 23, 2007 in Games. 4 Comments

“I am a 29 year old woman and I love the Sims”, Anna whispered to me. I was out in HMV the other day observing and chatting to female gamers, when Anna whispered this to me. As a fellow woman, also starting to break the cliches and get into gaming, I asked Anna why she was whispering. She told me that she was embarrassed.

Embarrassed because first and foremost, she was a girl gamer (it was like she was telling me she had a drug addiction or regularly beat her children) and secondly, the Sims- well that was for kids wasn’t it? This one sentence was so insightful. This is the way that many women I have spoken to feel about gaming. That its not their right to game. That it is something that should be discussed in corridors and whispered rather than actively debated and discussed.

This is astonishing when you consider that according to a Daily Telegraph survey, more women than men play games between the ages of 24-35 - that is if you include mobile and online gaming. And women aren’t just playing the Sims. World of Warcraft is now evenly split between men and women. And according to EA, even macho driving-games like “Burnout” are showing an increase in female players.

As a thirty something mum, I went into some games stores to see what the retail environment was like and whether it was appealing to women. With the exception of Hamley’s, it was quite an intimidating experience, mostly full of gothic-looking men in a fug of sweat.

I asked a few sales people what games I could play as a novice gamer for my DS Lite: Although, they were friendly enough, the choice they offered to me was Bratz or Brain Training. Surely there is more to games than having an imaginary pet or who wanted to train her brain, not according to London’s game store shopping assistants. I walked away feeling disillusioned.

When I spoke to Anna, her face lit up when she spoke about gaming. Contrary to recieved opinion, she told me she was a ‘basher and shooter,’ that is her favourite genres of games were not at all the ones that women are supposed to love. She had been playing games since she was a teenager. It was ‘her’ thing. It made her feel alive. It was her “me-time”.

Anna isn’t a one-off. There are thousands of wealthy working women who feel exactly the same as she does. These women want games to play on the way to a board–meeting, not just games intended for a pinked-up teen bedroom.

It occurs to me that this perception about the appropriateness of gaming is one of the biggest barriers that prevent women buying the games they secretly desire. I’m sure games companies have the resources to deal with it, but the question is do they have the will? The entire games sales and marketing channel is still focused around teenage to twenty-something men.

To shake-up this channel will require games producers, retailers and marketers to transform this dirty little secret into inspirational form of recreation.

NZ Herald; Truth, women and … electronics

Published on September 23, 2007 in Press Coverage. 3 Comments

“One final thought. Please, for the next five years at least, lose the pink. Pink has become a cliche: make it pink and bingo, that’s the woman thing taken care of.” -Kevin Roberts, chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi world-wide, writing in the NZ Herald.

I agree with Kevin about the over-reliance on traditional research. Much of the qual research done today is similar to the 1950’s, where you take your ‘respondent’ and stick them in a focus room, and the women feels like an experiment. The way to find the truth is to stand next to the till while a women is multi-tasking with her two children, husband on the phone and trying to find her purse. You end up hearing whats going on in her life, not whats going on in your store.

Campaign: Tech ads ignore women

Published on September 23, 2007 in Press Coverage. 0 Comments

A short but sweet article in last week’s campaign, but I think Campaign should go into a lot more depth into the way technology and gaming is currently marketed to women if we are really to make a change. Campaign are well placed to raise this issue given their status as advertising’s most widely read mag, lets hope this is the start of an interesting debate on advertising to women.
Campaign, 14th Sept

Marketing Week: Tech brands fail women

Published on September 16, 2007 in Press Coverage. 1 Comment

Saatchi & Saatchi planning director Belinda Parmar says: “There’s a real opportunity here for brands and retailers in the consumer electronics sector to target women. This group of women told us loud and clear that they do not want diamante-encrusted mobile phones and baby pink DAB radios. Our aim is to get clients to think differently about how they develop, distribute and market products to women.” -Marketing Week, 10th Sept 2007

Wired: What Do Women Want? Less Pink, More Tech

Published on September 16, 2007 in Press Coverage. 0 Comments

“There are clearly some smart, forward-thinking marketers in the industry, but for some reason, when it comes to targeting women, things haven’t moved on,” said Belinda Parmar, planning director at Saatchi. “Most women feel cheated when they walk into stores or see ads with baby-pink, diamante-encrusted products.” - Wired Magazine, 10th September 2007

Shiny Shiny TV: The Lady Geek poll

Published on September 16, 2007 in Interesting. 1 Comment

The excellent Shiny Shiny TV are running a poll on “Pinking Up” - please visit their site and participate. I’m keen to see if Shiny’s younger demographic feel the same as the women I spoke to, which is that pink plastic is short-selling female tech-customers. At the moment the pink-haters are leading by a slim margin of 10%.

While I’m no fan of pink gadgets, I’m not going to go so far as to say pink products should be abolished. There’s a clear segment who love anything in pink, however they tend to be younger girls. According to our study of 750 women, only 9% wanted a product to look pink and feminine. What women want is beautiful, elegant design.

The Digital Campfire

Published on September 16, 2007 in Articles. 0 Comments

This idea has been brewing in my brain for a while. I was doing some Xploring (where we observe the way customers behave to find the truth rather than stick them in a 1950s focus group and bombard them with dull questions) and I noticed something really interesting about the change in role of the main TV room. And how women are the driving force of this new dynamic in the living room. The ownership stats of HD TV is equal for men and women and if you ask most men and women, the women get the final stay of what actually gets bought for the living room.

The main TV room has acquired a shrine like status. It’s become a campfire for the most sacred rituals of togetherness. Most campfires are lit exclusively for recreation which is the main purpose of the TV room. People tend to find something fascinating about flames and glowing coals, so a campfire is usually an agreeable (and warm) way to pass the time from dusk to bedtime as the TV room is. Staring into the flames of a camp fire is both mesmerizing and captivating as is seeing Harry Potter in HD. The TV room is also a good venue for intimate conversation and storytelling. Families connect (and argue) in their TV rooom. Families share confidences, stories, their fears, their desires.

The collective digital fireplace is slick, slim line, blur free, HD TV enabled, digitally tuned with over 100 channels, often partnered with a HD DVD, PVR, DVR and Wii Console (as is the case in my living room). It takes pride of place in the living room and has become the pivotal place in the home.

Most people don’t actually know what it can really do and that you need programmes broadcast in HD and actually most DVD’s are not HD yet but who cares? It looks fabulous and for a change, technology is actually bringing families together. 60% of Amercians say they would like to spend more time with their family. I am sure that this is the same in the Uk. 43% of Americans say they would buy more technology if it helped them do this.

The Digital Campfire is an opiate, as some Marxists would say. If only you could heat marshmallows on it!

Wonderland: GameStop having to ‘rethink’ their shop layout

Published on September 16, 2007 in Interesting. 0 Comments

I agree with Alice from the wonderland blog. The ’scent of man’ is very much prevalent in games stores. Its off putting and intimidating for women, no matter how confident you are and considering that more women play games in the 24-35 year old bracket (if you include mobile & casual gaming), there is a huge opportunity for companies to tap into this market of intelligent, educated women with lots of disposable cash. Here’s a picture I took of CEX, there’s room for improvement!