What's up with Women?

Together with the great people at LHBS in Vienna we have been working to collectively create a study on the current patterns that can be identified regarding women. A lot of the signs we collected are from international sources - nevertheless has our work a German- or at least European focus in most of it. What is without doubt is that women today are strongly influencing the economy and are a key target for brands from all categories.

The Prologue to Women: The Sheconomy
Women globally make about 60% of all brand purchases and influence close to 80%. Women possess more economic clout than the combined economies of India and China. It’s been said that the world economy needs women! Women got the money and Women been spending it yet most women feel completely misunderstood, often insulted by brands. Women buy cars, health services, financial paper and technological products and services yet most of these are marketed to men. In worse case scenarios, marketers give them ‘pink stuff’ or ‘technology for dummies’ (think Della from Dell). Someone is missing something.



Just looking at the figures, something is about to change - female quota yes or no. It is just a matter of time that women will become even more influential than they are already. A look not just at the birth rates and population statistics in Germany shows that more women will spend more time in the work force in the future - not just because they want to, but because we as a society don't have a choice. And looking at their level of education, they will do so in different and more influential positions in the future - as only 35% of students were females in 1970, we are today at a share of 51% of university attendants in Germany. And as it seems it pays off to have female influence within companies, as further stats show.

It has been a great time doing this research together - and I am a bit sad that I will not follow through with this in 2012 as I am moving on to work at DDB Tribal in Berlin from January 2012 on. But keep an eye on this space - I will keep you updated. The study will be published partly on an upcoming blog - and we would love to hear more from all of you regarding our thesis and identified patterns. If you want to find out more, sign up for our newsletter for the study or contact doubleshift or LHBS directly.

A summer full of coffee breaks & work work work

Image http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2011/06/the-new-hallucinogenic-craze-coffee-scare-of-the-day.html


I needed to drink a lot of coffee this summer -as it just was too wet, dark and cold for anything cooler. Only good thing about it: enough time to get loads of work done, with the help of caffeine even better. This said I still know it is no excuse for not coming up with more blog posts lately. Over all the coffee I did an Interview with the Mediafront blog from Norway - which was a great way to reflect on my own views and inspirations a little. I get the feeling I would love to do more of these "5 key questions" with other planners and thinking minds as well myself.

Apart from this the summer was filled with musings on women today and what we can learn about females and their current behavioural patterns - together with our friends Joanna and Stefan from LHBS in Vienna we are currently putting together the last pieces of a little study on this subject. Stay tuned for more.

In the meantime I also had the chance to challenge some of the thinking on this stuff with my peers at this years Planning BarCamp in Hamburg. (I also wrote something for new business ahead of the barcamp to promote the format, for all of you that are not familiar with barcamps in general). Thanks to Christian (his twitter name is mindcaffeine - so more coffee for the mind here) a splendid afternoon with some sharp minds from Hamburg and beyond. I truly enjoyed the personal exchange on "women" as well as on many other different topics - all under the umbrella of "awesomeness" - very much and look forward to more events like this! As I am sure this will be an awesome fall (after such a depressing summer nothing else is possible!)

With all the coffee going I was also able to finish a chapter on "agency briefing" for a compilation published by Andreas Baetzgen, Professor at Hochschule der Medien in Stuttgart, which will be published in November under the title of "Brand Planning". It should be a nice overview on the topic with a lot of really cool authors including some of my former & all time favourite colleagues such as Dirk Nitschke, Sebastian Wendland, Oke Mueller or Alison Segar (which is even more flattering to be one of them). Thanks to all of you out there that provided your point of view on the subject of briefings from clients to agencies - it was truly valuable to have a little "quantitative" data.