June 17, 2005

Dammit, Nikki, I'm gonna retract the offer to have Jay help you set up your blog if you start writing good stuff there and abandon your extra fine comments here! Talk about links...I want a link to your mind.

Mac Envy

More on design. I'm looking at an ad for Mac OS X Tiger this morning in The New Yorker. The left-hand page is just this fabulously delicious "X" and the right-hand page is just six testimonials, starting with "It leaves Windows XP in the dust."

Have you been to an Apple Store? It's one of the coolest retail environments ever. Products there for you to play with, friendly people to help you, a demo session going on upstairs, along with the Genius Bar, where you can get help without feeling like a dope. All designed...well, perfectly.

These guys NAIL design. And, boy, does it make you want to buy.

We need to stay on PC in the business side of our office. But every time I see a Mac ad, I want to convert. They know what it means to live a brand.

The recent issue of Fast Company focuses on design. A. G. Lafley, Proctor & Gamble's CEO says that design, not simply price or technology, should be P&G's key differentiator.

Says Lafley, "We have to create a great experience every time you touch the brand, and the design is a really big part of creating the experience and the emotion....I want P&G to become the number-one consumer-design company in the world."

Right on!

Education Affects Media Habits

We already know that women - on average - are better educated than men (and they do better in school and have higher test scores). And the gap is widening.

It's interesting to note how education has a significant impact on women's lifestyles, media habits, income and buying power.

According to a new report by The Media Audit...

- 56.3% of all those who listen to country radio are women, but only 26.6% of those that do have a college degree;

- on the other hand, just 18% of all women listen to sports radio, but 51.9% of those that do have a college education;

- more than 58.2% of college educated women have household incomes of $50,000 or more compared to 39.8% of all women. (Well, that's no big surprise.)

Bottom line, of course, is that it's crazy to consider any demographic (especially gender) in any kind of monolithic way. And, marketers to women better smarten up, not dummy down.