Just before the weekend some more thoughts.

Referring to my last post about female digital behaviour. It is often said that in marketing targeting women is often overlooked but very important. Women buy more than man, have a big influence in the decision making process. I think their influence is even growing since women have more often their own job. Which results in more confidence, girlpower. “All the honeys making money“

You even see more and more families in which the women making more money than the man (in the Netherlands at least). I call them Girl leading couples myself.

Research has shown that if you want to target women you need to think further than a pink product or website. We also know that social networks without a specific cause are more used by women than by man. Man prefer social networks like linkedin.com. Can we conclude that women enjoy more the communications itself? I think so.

Women like to share. With the growing amount of social networks, connecting alone is not enough anymore. What has your network to offer. Is it more local, more subject orientated… but maybe we should think more in concepts here.

I still miss the voice of advertising agencies in the interactive field. Advertising agencies have a huge experience in concepting. Large agencies like Saatchi and TBWA have some basic emotion as a core value like love, disruption etc.

Maybe it is time to start social networks based on a concept or emotion in which a certain emotion is the connecting factor. Let’s call them EmoNetworks.

Think about their use in branding. Disruption network, love network, anger network, nostalgy network.. This year the domainname www.bored.com was sold for millions.

Never underestimate emotions. Communism was based on emotions.

Lately I called several major organisations asking for the online marketing department, the Internet communications person etc. Most of the time this seems more difficult then you would expect.

First a little bit of silence at the other end of the line. Then the receptionist does a quick search in their “phonebook”. Then somebody answers the phone. Either some IT guy or communication assistant if you are lucky. “mm yes Internet communications, we do something about that but we don’t really have someone responsible for that. Maybe you should try..”

It seems like there is no one responsible for digital communications at all or he/she is just unfindable. Seems like digital marketing still doesn’t have its real place within these organisations. Most of the time it is easier for me to find the right person on linkedin.com than for his colleagues inside the company.

Is digital marketing still something for this one guy who cares? Or do they just leave it to the advertising agencies? Seems to me we still have a long way to go.