My friend james Clar is a lighting designer…or a designer who uses lighting to express himself…please check out his site…http://www.jamesclar.com

I’m convinced that we have yet to fully realize that focusing on the female customer is not a fad.

It’s not going to dissolve into the ether like past eras of marketing buzz, where moving from target to target was the strategy du jour.

The power of the female customer will not only influence how brands market this year and next; it will define the business and marketing strategies for at least the first few decades of the 21st century.
You may ask,”Who endowed you with the crystal ball to predict the future”?

No one. One could come up with the answer as easily as I could, if one looked closely enough at the patterns drawn by history – patterns that mark our paths and shape our society.

Look back over the last century, there have been three historic milestones or “waves” for American women, based on the confluence of three critical elements:
1. The role of women in society at a given time
2. The banding together of women in a concerted effort to make their voices heard
3. The emergence of a new form of communication technology

In 1920, women gained the the right to vote for the first time after declaring their intent to fight for equal rights. It had taken 54 years of marching, protesting and imprisonment to finally triumph. So what was the tipping point for this First Wave of feminism? Communication to the masses through the power of the press and by means of the newest invention in the home – the telephone.

In 1963 Feminine Mystique was published, it was a scathing analysis of the role of women in 1960s America. Overnight, the country experienced a Second Wave of feminism. The call demanding equal opportunity in education and jobs spread like wildfire, thanks to images of female protestors and bra burners that flickered on nightly television newscasts.

Jump ahead another forty years to current day. A Third Wave rebellion is under way, and today’s female consumer is swinging her purchasing power around like David’s slingshot, aimed directly at the Goliath of traditional advertising and marketing.

Women are calling for recognition in the form of consumer parity. They want to be acknowledged as an individual consumers with individual needs, rather than anonymous members of the female demographic. “I know I’m a woman,” she’s saying. “But I’m not like every other woman. Would you please start speaking to me about what matters to me?”

What’s causing this Third Wave of feminism to spread at an epidemic rate? The emergence of the newest form of communication technology – the Internet and smart devices like the Blackberry..

Women are devoting more and more of their highly valuable time to researching, reaching out, and shopping online. It fits their multitasking lifestyle perfectly, with instant access to products, services, and each other – completing a full circle in the purchasing and influencing process.

Technology has made women the mainstream customer base of today and tomorrow. And it’s not going away.

Get used to it.

The Third Wave is on the rise. Will you watch it roll by, or will you seize the moment, hanging ten on the cutting edge of the future?

If you ask nicely, resident movie mean guy Samuel L. Jackson will tick off a laundry list of comic books he loved as a kid, and sometimes, still reads. “Superman, Batman, The Flash, Aquaman, Silver Surfer, you know, the ordinary,” said the actor, who stars in the upcoming The Spirit, which premiered Wednesday night..

Opening Christmas Day, it stars Eva Mendes, Sarah Paulson, Scarlett Johansson and Gabriel Macht. Jackson plays his nemesis, The Octopus.

“It’s pure boy stuff,” Jackson said of comic-based films. “Guys like to chase each other and hit each other over the head.”

Jackson wasn’t alone in his adoration of a good comic-strip story.

“I love the overall theme of most comics; I think the universal theme of good versus evil kind of gets everybody,” Mendes said. “I did Ghostrider a few years ago, and I familiarized myself with comics. (But) do I pick up comics? Do I have one in my bag? No. I’m going to be honest. I’m very specific about what I read on my downtime. Because I have very little downtime, you know?”

Writer/director Frank Miller called his cast amazing. I agree but I also hope the story is not lame!

“A good story is a good story. A good character is a good character,” said Miller, who also is behind hit films like Sin City. “And what I did with this astonishing cast was adapt it to modern times.”

Jamie King, who also starred in Sin City, said comic books are made for film translations, and the reason people love them is obvious.

“Everybody wants to be a hero, and everybody wants to have super powers and really be able to share their talents with the world,” King said. “That’s what superheroes do. If I had a power, it would be to have the ability to heal people.”

Said Paulson: “Comic books scream to be actualized. Sometimes you read a novel and your own imagination is actually what tells the story. But when you have a drawing, it begs to be put to life.”

I think this is good news…I don’t want everyone to know where I browse but I am sure marketers do.

With U.S. and European regulators and watchdogs worried that Internet companies are compromising users’ privacy by keeping data about online behavior for long periods, Yahoo Inc. said Wednesday that it would shorten that time from 13 months to 90 days.

The retention policy is the shortest among major U.S. search engines and could pressure rivals Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to reduce the time they keep information about their users. In September, Google began to remove portions of personally identifiable information after nine months. Microsoft, which keeps such data 18 months, said last week it would support an industry standard of six months.

This policy if it spreads to other companies will hinder the new movements that create a profile of users’ likes and dislikes. Marketers can then serve the advertising that suits a person’s preferences.

Two years ago, spurred on by a groundswell of interest in all things eco-friendly, green-related content was sprouting everywhere. For magazines, that meant a flurry of green-themed issues. But the economic downturn, coupled with cooling consumer interest, have some publishers pulling the plug on those products.

Among titles holding off on green issues in ’09 are Conde Nast’s Domino, Time Inc.’s Sunset, Mariah Media’s Outside and independent title Discover. Active Interest Media’s Backpacker, already seeing the concept as tired, did not produce a second global-warming issue this year. “My sense is the idea of doing a green issue has been done so much it feels anachronistic,” said Backpacker editor Jonathan Dorn.

It didn’t help that newsstand sales weren’t so hot for some green issues. Backpacker’s global-warming special sold 44,038 on stands versus its average of 50,227. Discover’s green issue this past May sold 93,000 newsstand copies, versus its 115,767 average. Domino’s 2008 and 2007 green issues sold below average, even though vp, publisher Beth Brenner pointed out that March is not a strong month for single-copy sales.

Not all green issues bombed. Outside sold above average on stands, while this year’s special from Conde Nast’s Vanity Fair, featuring cover subject Madonna, sold 370,000 copies at stands, only slightly below average.

Editors insist readers are still interested in green themes, although some said they are evolving coverage in response to green’s maturation. Hachette Filipacchi Media’s Elle — which made a statement by publishing its green issue on recycled paper this year — plans a water-themed issue in ’09, reminiscent of the blue issue of Rodale’s Women’s Health in 2007.

VF editor Graydon Carter said, via e-mail, that while he may not devote his entire May issue to the environmental theme next year, he plans more eco-oriented coverage overall — “especially now that we have an incoming administration that is sensitive to the environment, knows what it means to be green and takes the science, and the science of global warming, seriously.”

National Geographic folded its quarterly Green Guide, a consumer-service publication it bought in 2007. But Claudia Malley, vp and U.S. publisher of Nat Geo, said the declining ad market, rather than waning consumer interest, was to blame, noting that newsstand sales for the first two issues were in the 70,000-80,000 range. Malley said a special newsstand issue is planned for next September.

Metaliica and Guitar Hero make a powerful marketing team.

In the three years since Guitar Hero stole the video game stage, fast-fingered consumers have bought more than 22 million units. Now, Activision and developer Neversoft are looking to kick the franchise up a notch with Guitar Hero: Metallica, launched this spring 2009.

Designed to challenge hard-core players, the game “is a lot harder, especially on drums. Well, it’s a lot harder all around, to tell the truth,” says lead designer Alan Flores. “Most of the songs have a higher level of difficulty, certainly at the end of the game when you are playing the old-school Metallica stuff where you play really, really fast and there’s lot of double bass (drum) playing, fast guitar playing and crazy leads.

The time is right for a Metallica game.

The band is back atop the heavy metal world. Its latest album, Death Magnetic, has gone platinum after premiering at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top 200 chart — its fifth consecutive album to do so.

It also received four Grammy nominations,best rock album, best recording package, rock instrumental (Suicide and Redemption) and best metal performance (My Apocalypse) and the band is a 2009 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominee.

The killer app for the iPhone is actually the iTunes App Store.

Five months after Apple launched its online emporium, I believe it even more, my friends nd colleagues having downloaded a gaggle of programs, including some that transform the iPhone 3G into a harmonica, metric system converter and level.

There are now more than 10,000 of these applications for the original iPhone, its 3G successor and in most cases, for the iPod Touch. Many are free.

Because of the drain on the battery, Apple still won’t let developers produce apps that run in the background. So forget about listening to Internet radio while checking e-mail for now. The market is also waiting on an app that will let you shoot video.

That said, exploring the App Store on your handheld or via computer is a delight, and you can rely on fellow users for reviews. Some of my favorites:

Listening to radio. There’s a reason Pandora has emerged as the most popular free iPhone application. Type a song or artist’s name, and Pandora creates an instant radio station inspired by your selection, same as on a PC or Mac. Fine-tune stations by indicating whether you like what’s being played. In some cases, you can buy the music you hear through iTunes.

The iPhone, of course, functions as an iPod. But your storage is limited. If you have gobs of music on your computer, consider Simplify Media. The $3.99 program lets you stream (most of) your music collection and that of up to 30 friends.

Setup is simple, and though music sometimes is slow to start up, it sounds good. (It works on Wi-Fi, 3G or pokier Edge networks.) You can view song lyrics and artist bios. But Simplify can’t remotely play iTunes purchases that are DRM or copy protected.

How often have you heard a song on the radio or in a club but didn’t know its name? Hold the iPhone up to the radio, and let the free Shazam app identify the tune, usually within 20 seconds. Shazam doesn’t get it right every time. But it correctly tagged material as varied as Come On Over from Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan and Corcovado from Astrud Gilberto.

Making music. Smule’s addictive 99-cent Ocarina turns the iPhone into the ancient flute-like instrument. You softly blow into the iPhone’s microphone and play notes by pressing and holding your fingers over any of four virtual on-screen holes. There are 16 possible combinations, and you can alter the sound by tilting the phone. There’s even “sheet music” on Smule’s website to play anything from Over the Rainbow to If I Were a Rich Man. Ocarina is social. Tap a globe icon to rate performances from users around the world. They, in turn, can show you the love.

Or try developer Benjamin McDowell’s Harmonica app, also 99 cents. Sure, it’s odd putting your mouth on the screen. Fortunately, you can also play with fingers.

Diversions. Many have enjoyed racing games that take advantage of the iPhone motion sensor, including Vivendi’s Crash BandicootNitro Kart 3D ($5.99) and Pangea’s Cro-Mag Rally ($1.99). Glu Mobile’s recent release of a 3D marble puzzle called Bonsai Blast ($3.99) is also good.

But as a casual gamer, I gravitate to titles such as Brain Toot (99 cents), which serves up vision, memory and other mind exercises. In one, while being timed, you must pick out the highest or lowest numbers from a series of numbers shown.

Semi Secret Software’s $1.99 Wurdle is a wordsmith’s addiction, kind of like Boggle on the iPhone. Against the clock, trace your finger across a letter-filled board to spot as many words as possible.

Handy to have around. Want to convert kilometers to miles? Celsius to Fahrenheit? Fetch currency rates? Western ITS Limited’s simple a2z Pro Unit Converter is free and a boon to folks who travel overseas.

The iPhone lacks a voice recorder. The 99-cent Retronyms Recorder adds the capability. There are a few ways to save recordings to a PC or Mac. You can e-mail a link or sync up recordings via Wi-Fi to listen in iTunes or another player.

Worried about adverse reactions? The free Epocrates Rx database can clue you in. You’ll grapple with medical jargon, since Epocrates is aimed at health care pros. But the app can enlighten you about the drugs family members swallow. And if you’ve got a loose pill lying around, you might be able to identify it by entering its color, shape and other characteristics.

Looking for a new place to eat? Urbanspoon helps find restaurants near your GPS location. Shake the phone to spin three wheels, one representing neighborhood, the second, a food type, and the third, price. When the wheels stop, you’ve landed on a random listing with an eatery’s phone number, address and reviews. The app is free.

Rather dine at home? The 99-cent Grocery IQ shopping list might help you bag the right ingredients. It has a 130,000-item database, right down to brand-name peanut butter, pretzels and pasta. You can choose quantities and sizes, and check everything off as you patrol the supermarket aisles. Or e-mail your list to whoever is shopping for you.

The free Google Mobile App has direct links to popular Google programs, including your Docs, News, Maps and location-aware search. Google also can search your phone’s contacts, calendars and so on. The gee-whiz feature is Voice Search. Hold the phone up to your ear and bark out a query. Results aren’t perfect. Google recognized a search for “child-friendly restaurants” as “cadence-friendly.”

As part of its free app, Amazon is experimenting with an interesting feature called Amazon Remembers. You snap a picture of a product with the iPhone camera; photos are stored at the Amazon site. Amazon will try to find a similar product for sale on the Web, even at rival sites.

Need help hanging a picture? PosiMotion’s 99-cent A Level utility works in landscape, portrait or face-up mode. As with a real spirit level, you try to position the iPhone so the bubble is aligned in the center of the screen.

Talk about not being on the level. You’re on a blind date that’s soured and are dying for an excuse to bolt. The aptly named 99-cent Fake Calls app from Magic Tap is your ticket outta there. You can select the time a fake call will come in, customize the “caller’s” picture and choose a ring tone. You’ll have to devise your own excuse for making an exit.

I heard that soon there will be a US$99 version!

The original movie, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” was so powerful and not too over the top with effects. I think that made the film more real. I hope the new one doesn’t get carried away but I will see it tonight! I think it was a head of its time for delivering a social message.

When you are hungry and thirsty in booming Northwest Arkansas, I recommend a visit to Doe’s Eat Place in Bentonville. They will serve you a great two-pound steak, tamales and biscuits with honey — but only the Bentonville location has 100 beers from around the world in stock and ready to pour. I recommend a tasty local microbrew, Diamond Bear Pale Ale. And the staff is so friendly they’ll break out their guitars and sing songs for you with only the slightest encouragement.

I was filming in Crossett, Arkansas years ago and drove 8o plus miles for the steak…good to know they are still around.

You don’t have to be a member of the Federal Reserve Board to know that marketers across all sectors are hunkering down and searching for the fastest and cheapest ways to acquire and retain customers as budgets evaporate.

In the race for low cost, high yield tactics suspicion naturally falls on digital and online media with its well known but often un-harvested ROI promise.

According to Lee Odden’s Online Marketing Blog, blogging, SEO, PPC social networking and e-mail are the top 5 tactics marketers will emphasize in the next 6 months, though not all will yield quick or positive results if you’re not already working on them. Here’ are a few things to consider before embracing these tactics.

Blogging. Considered the human face of corporations and businesses, blogs without traffic and without a point of view don’t matter.
It’s not enough just to craft customer-friendly messages in blog formats. You’ve got to get customers to click, read and believe. This demands content that’s more textured than the party line sufficient to bring them back, buy something or talk up your brand.

There is no hard research linking blogging with increased brand awareness, preference or advocacy, though company blogs with large audiences should logically develop these things. Similarly there are not a lot of cases that show how blogs drive traffic to brand or ecommerce sites. If you aren’t already blogging and building audiences now isn’t the time to start if you want measurable results in the near term.

SEO. Seven of ten searchers click on the natural results first. But if you’re not on the first page you’re toast.

Getting to the first page requires huge investments of skill, tools and dedicated players. If you have them in-house or can outsource them efficiently, this is a good bet though improvement is incremental and sometimes glacial due to intense competition and almost constant gaming by both search engines and optimizers.

PPC. Play per click search advertising is the fastest and easiest thing you can do. With even modest budgets you can incrementally improve traffic and results. If you’re willing to monkey with it daily, you can have the illusion of control and can quickly and easily see your progress, parse your dollars and experiment with new or different key words and phrases. Even from a standing start PPC advertising can quickly have a positive ROI on your business.

Social Networking. This is the most hyped and least understood marketing tool. Reaching out to large numbers of customers linked to each other in social forums using the images, language and customs they expect and like makes good sense.

Some brands have amassed large numbers of “friends” others have distributed information and coupons, prompted interaction and feedback, run contests, collected data and even sold some merchandise.

So far however no reliable messaging or media formulas have emerged. Now the sites, eager to monetize their memberships and prove their financiers right, are aggressively selling different flavors of behaviorally targeted advertising; which itself has no track record or widely accepted success stories. At relatively modest costs social networks are a great experimental tool and marketing test lab well worth your time and attention; though keep your expectations for a fast payoff low.

E-Mail. In site of widespread hatred of SPAM and the near ubiquitous deployment of increasingly sophisticated spam filters, outbound opt-in e-mail is the most cost effective and reliable tool you can use. E-mail works.

You can create and transmit campaigns that work fast and cheap. Real-time feedback on delivery, opens, clicks and action allow you to revise, re-target and re-engage customers quickly at modest costs. And frequency works much like direct mail with each sequential blast of the same message generally yielding 50% of the previous one. The key determinants of success are a clean opt-in list, a credible FROM line, a motivating SUBJ line with an actionable offer inside. Shorter copy with minimal graphics and clearly marked calls to action work best. If you only have enough budget to do one thing, bet the farm on e-mail.

Affiliate Marketing. This approach offers the prospect of everyone helping everyone else. Though in reality it’s about finding the right balance between greed and self-interest. The affiliate networks offer automated platforms and minimal advice. For most programs the 80/20 rule applies — a minority of sites will yield the biggest payoffs.

Affiliates are looking for opportunities to generate no-fuss incremental revenue with minimal effort and involvement. In some cases this works like gangbusters. In others its a long hard slog. Setting up an effective affiliate network takes at least 90 days and requires dedicated staff and expertise. If you start now, it might begin to pay out in 2009.
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