“Tahiti is sexier than selling toilet paper.” Graceann Bennett from Ogilvy Chicago grabbed everyone’s attention in one of the early morning sessions yesterday. She, along with Debbie Solomon of MindShare and Beth Uyenco of Microsoft led an incredible workshop: From Dull to Delightful: Digital Paths to Filling the Shopping Cart! In their work for Kimberly-Clark, they knew consumers felt that shopping for toilet paper is the #1 most annoying thing to shop for. They wanted to know, "how do you create and build true brand management with a product that is annoying?"
Well, you guessed it, they conducted a LOT of research! It included 62 media diaries, 12 insight group discussions, ethnographies, idea stations (an online chat room), mindshare omnibus study, digital domain, digital trend analysis, and cultural deep dive. And they did this with women across all life stages. Whew!
They conducted the research with women across life stages…and they learned a lot about women, especially what women want in the “digital” arena.
During the workshop, they gave us a little quiz to test our female I.Q. Let’s see how you do…
• How many words does the average woman speak per day vs. men? (answer: 7000 vs. 2000)
• How many women have smart phones? (answer: 10 million and this number doubled in the past year)
• How many women are gamers? (answer: 59% of women are gamers and 70% of women played a PC game in the last month)
Through their research with these women, they found 3 distinct “digital segments: Digital Outliers (9%), Mainstream Users (75%) and Digital Divas (16%). And while they cited many life stage differences across the segments, they also noted several commonalities. Primarily, women like real content by real people. Women are not only trusting friends for advice on products, they are also using “advice from strangers” as a source for help. YouTube has become a primary source for getting “product advice” because of the high touch content it provides. This YouTube video was cited as a touching example of a father explaining to his daughter how to cut a mango.
Good example of online content women want.
It was interesting to note that when you’re selling products that are “annoying” such as toilet paper, you don’t necessarily have to be top of mind, you just have to make it easy for her and it is becoming critical to do that online. One consumer quote they gave says it best, “I actually have a subscription for my paper products and detergent on Amazon.com.”