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New image, new blog but the same philosophy.

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Women buy the 50% of cars

Despite the fact that cars are not men only-area any longer, marketers keep ignoring women at car dealers and they turn to men. That may be the reason why 77% of women prefer to go to a dealer accompanied by a man, in spite of being perfectly capable to do it alone.

The following are a couple of advices for car brands which are targeting women:

• Women buy from a person who they trust, so it’s especially important to create a good relationship between salesman and a client.
• She is the one who is going to make a decision: buy or not to buy, so make her feels as a client. Concentrate on communicating to her, and not to her men.
• 54% of women in USA base their purchase decision on information found out in the Internet. 40% of European women do the same. Think of women at the time of developing your website.
• Women like to share experiences. If they have a good experience, they will tell it to their friends. If they don’t or if they have a negative one… they will do the same.

What kind of cars do women like?
According to some European reports, as an investigation by AutoScout24´s, women pay attention to design, security and price and they prefer cars with five doors, so they can park and move easily in the city jungle.

Spot Nissan



A report by LineaDirecta points out the importance of having a CD player, cup holders and a space to leave things as a handbag.

Only for women
Volvo has been the first, and the only one until now, to create a prototype of a car designed especially for women, by a group of 5 women. After 15 months of an intensive work and opinions given by company’s specialists and employees, Volvo launched the prototype during the International Motor Show of Ginebra in 2004.

This model allows women to forget about car’s maintenance. The car itself lets the driver know that it needs checking. What shall I do with my bag? This won’t be a problem no more, because Volvo YCC has a separate space for the woman’s bag reserved between the front seats. You can also find handy pigeon-holes saved for keys, coins or a mobile phone. Moreover it is very easy to park because it calculates the space left and helps the driver to move the steering wheel.

Although the prototype was a success, the Swedish brand declared that YCC was a concept car and was never planned to be on sale. However, some of the features have been put into production in other Volvo models.

Examples of strategies to women
Other car producers, that use to identify their brands with men, adapted their strategies to women.

GOODYEAR
In 2008 this brand included in the communication strategy a promotion for women: they offered prizes as beauty products, spa visits and discounts. According to Daniel Papa, Bussiness Development Manager, the brand wants that women feel comfortable when visiting dealer canters.

HONDA
In Argentina, this brand organized a special activity thought to improve drivers´ technique and motorcycles´ knowledge and skills.

Moreover, Honda sponsors different women’s competitions, as Surfing or Trial.

FORD
Ford approaches women by sponsoring Nike 5K Women Race, a competition dedicated to women and aimed to celebrate the International Women´ Day.

Women’s economic independence means the incorporation of women into sectors considered as masculine. The automotive sector is one of them, and now it has to develop new strategies directed to women.

VOLKSWAGEN
In China, Volkswagen is one of the sponsors of Table-Tennis Women Championship. This sport has been strategically chosen, as the vast majority of Chinese society and mass media follow it.

Also in the Internet
In the Internet we can find webs directed exclusively to women and dedicated to cars, car maintenance… Here and here are some examples:

And what do you think?
Women can’t park, “it had to be a woman”… Fortunately the situation is changing, and we are gaining the control of the roads. We do not only occupy the co-driver’s seat or choose the colour of our man’s car, but we buy and drive cars. Don’t forget it! Dealers and repair shops can’t keep on smelling of masculinity, and marketing strategists must begin to think of women as a real target.

Men’s kingdom is falling apart!

What kind of car are you looking for? Would you buy the Volvo YCC? What would you like car dealers to offer you?

Sources: Mujeres&Cia, Supermotor, Tribe, Terra.

How Nescafé convinced women

It’s 1949. Nescafe launches a new product: an instant coffee. The product’s advantage is clear: the instant coffee dissolves in hot water within just three minutes. Indeed, pre-tests show pleased potential consumers.


With its first campaign, Nescafé commits a mistake in communication to women
However, at the time of introducing the product into US market, sales results are disappointing. Nestlé begins a research:”Why don’t you buy an instant coffee? I don’t like the taste”

Nescafé wanted to go further and made a casual focus, on two groups of housewives. Each group was given a shopping list. The lists were identical expect for one detail: one contained Nescafé instant coffee and the other one, a grind coffee. Each group was asked to describe the type of woman who has written the shopping list. The group whose list contained Nescafé, described the woman as lazy, unorganised, careless, spendthrift, bad wife and mother.

Nescafé found out what the real reason was—why consumers didn’t buy Nescafe’s new product: women felt that if they reduce time that they use to dedicate for preparing coffee every day, their families might consider them lazy housewives. In 50´s, Nescafe’s advantages have been seen as something negative.

Women—the new target
Then, what could Nescafé do? The brand launched a new advertising campaign. The slogan: “The instant coffee will allow you to dedicate more time for more important things!” helped to change the opinion of American housewives.



And, what were those more important things? Looking after family, of course.

Instant coffee was discovered in 1901 by Satori Kato, an American chemist with Japanese origins. The invention caused a controversy. Many experts, especially Italian ones, were convinced that a good cup of coffee can only be made by highly qualified baristas.

This and the housewives resistance meant a great challenge for product’s sales. Nescafé had to point out product’s advantages without going against the women’s need to be recognized as dedicated housewives.

Nescafé was not selling a product, but an illusion of what it could do for its user. The brand began a campaign, which included previously mentioned slogan and introduced the product into the diary routine of women. It referred to relatives living far away and was aimed to cause the bad conscious: ¨it’s a long time since you’ve written them a single letter¨. It was said, that with the instant coffee, now there was no excuse for not writing. Housewives could do it perfectly, just if they decided to save some time prepareing an instant coffee.

These brilliant campaigns succeed in 50´s and it works nowadays.

Nescafé changes along with women.
Nowadays, women don’t need to be said that they should save time. Women want to save time, and not only because of their families. They want some extra time to look after themselves, and to…save time, after all!

In 80´s, Nescafé aimed its campaign to a more independent woman:



In last years, Nescafe’s campaigns are aimed not only to women. The brand has used the concept of friendship:



Current Nescafe’s ads are funny and sensual:



In difficult times, Nescafé made women buy a product that seemed to jeopardize
their image of dedicated housewives. The brand had enough empathy to understand the women’s background and adjust the product into their reality.

Nescafé managed to adapt its campaigns to different moments in women’s lives, since 1949 to nowadays, when the brand shows an independent and self-confident woman.

That’s without doubt a great strategy.
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Sources: FAO, University of Sydney, Nestlé, Jon Williamson

Keri Smith: Living out Loud

How do you imagine it is?

When a colleague of mine lent me the book, and she asked me this question, I knew the book would not be the typical book of a renowned professional, who share his/her experiences.

Keri Smith, the author, with all her experience and knowledge, could have written something like a creativity guide. However, when I have the book in my hands I find a cover that could have been a face of a fairytale: with an irregular and colourful typography.
Precisely the childhood is the backbone of the book—this stage of life when your mind is free of prejudices and conventions, when everyone is who they want to be and dream of what they’ll become in the future. It’s a time when you do what you want without thinking about consequences. A time when creativity flows free. That’s why Keri suggests us some games to unblock our mind, invites us to let our imagination fly and do things that we left behind, and never tried to do them again.

Leaving routine, making up, going deep inside of our minds and letting us go. Sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, we have to learn how to dream again. Trusting that we can do it and that we can be whoever we want to be. We only have to propose it to ourselves.
Living out loud is a game, a game where we are the main characters and where creativity slides down among dreams, wishes, crazy ideas and a lot, but a really big ¨lot¨, of optimism.
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Interview with Emma Hill

Hereby we inaugurate a series of interviews with some great personalities, girls only!
who will share with us their point of view on advertising & women.

We start up with the reproduction of an interview made by ihaveanidea. Thank you!

Ladies, gentlemen…let’s switch on the microphones!
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The following interview was made by ihaveanidea to Emma Hill, Creative Director at DDBO Melbourne:

ihaveanidea: Well we always like to start at the beginning. So how did you become interested in this crazy field we call advertising? I understand your foray into the business was not exactly “average.”

Emma: It all began on a small non-tropical island called Tasmania, at the bottom of Australia. At my school in Year 10, we were all given an A-Z book of jobs from which we had to decide what we wanted to do as work experience. I skipped over “Anal Prober” and “Barbarian” and landed on “Copywriter.” All the skills you needed were listed, and they seemed to match mine, so I stopped there, shut the book and said I wanted to spend my week in an ad agency. Never have wondered what might have been listed under “D”.

ihaveanidea: Ah, a pity. You missed out on "Darth Vader understudy" which might've been cool. So once your mind was set, how did you go about making that happen? Would a high school student even know about putting a portfolio together?

Emma: Surprisingly, BBDO has an office in Hobart. Is there nowhere the might of the BBDO network does not infiltrate? Anyways, BBDO Hobart had a CD that I asked to meet. I had a folio full of ideas I did on work experience, poems I’d written and ideas that now, when I think about them, make me feel very, very embarrassed.

He told me the old “there’s nothing doing in the creative department at the moment”, but his advice was just to get a foot in the door. And they happened to need a receptionist.

A week later I was working on the BBDO switchboard during the day, and every shit brief no one else wanted at night when I got home.

ihaveanidea: Sounds very superhero-ish. Was this a secret identity of yours, or did your co-workers know you were actively pursuing a creative job?

Emma: Oh, they knew, but the new receptionist working on the 10X2 press ads for the local used car yard wasn’t very threatening to them, I don’t think.

ihaveanidea: So at one point did they realize you were far better at creating ads than forwarding phone calls?

Emma: All the best 10X2’s in the world didn’t really help to be honest. After reception, the agency moved me to media. Then two years later, to account service. After another two years as a suit, I entered a National Radio Writers competition for first year creative’s – which I kinda lied about being – and won. The day after that, BBDO offered me a job in creative.

It was a long road, but now I can write ads, sell them to a client and book them.

ihaveanidea: And not only that, you can tell others how to do their own ads now. How was the journey from copywriter in Hobart to Creative Director in Melbourne?

Emma: It felt rough and rugged at the time, but looking back, it was pretty amazing really. I landed here in Melbourne and was lucky enough to be teamed up with the quirkiest, most interesting senior art director I’ve ever known. Tony Rogers. He taught me to look at the world from a crazy side as well as the strict and responsible answering the brief side.

We had a lot of ideas get through early, so got momentum really quickly as a team. We made a lot of TV for big brands, solved some big problems and won a few pitches. Then I was appointed Creative Director on a fashion retail account, which had massive concept turn over. We made telly spots every three weeks for different products. It was great fun, very frantic and a great way to get a grip on CD’ing.

After that, I was made Deputy CD of the department, then CD of the whole joint. Now, I’m CD of a group, which I much prefer. It means I get home before 2 AM.

ihaveanidea: Your career is rather unique in that, unlike many other esteemed CDs who moved from agency to agency and country to country, you've stayed in one place for many years and grew alongside it. What's your secret? What keeps you grounded in one place while other creatives wander the earth?

Emma: There’s no secret to why I’ve stayed in the one shop, although Clemenger Melbourne is actually more like a department store than a shop. I’ve been pretty open about the fact that as long as Clemenger kept evolving, doing great work and hanging on to what is probably one of the best client lists in the country, leaving would mean trying to find an agency that either had all that, or didn’t, and then spend five years trying to get it up to the level of this one.

People may read that and think I’m maybe lazy, but I think the opposite applies.
Plenty of people are asked to leave an agency after two or three years cause they get dangerously comfortable. I’ve worked my butt off to be here, and to stay here.

And just as importantly, love keeps me here too. He’s very worth staying put for.

ihaveanidea: But if you could ply your trade in any other part of the globe, where would you go? Or is Australia just too magical to leave?

Emma: I did always want to work in New York. I snuck off all espionage style one year, took my book over, spoke to some head hunters and actually got a couple of offers, which I was really considering. The only problem was these offers were made to me on September 10, 2001. The town kinda shut down the day after.

That said, Australia is a fun market. Approval levels are mammoth, though. They tend to go on for miles. Some of the clients can be quite conservative. But there are also great clients, great budgets, and great ideas here. Australia has a super knack of laughing at itself. I think you’d put our style somewhere between the wit of the UK and the quirk of the US.

ihaveanidea: You're an extremely successful CD in a world where it seems tougher for a female to reach the top. There are lots of press release style statements about how the Old Boys Club of this business is no more, but what are your thoughts?"

Emma: I think boys clubs in advertising are unavoidable, simply because there are more men at the top, working very closely together, under very stressful circumstances. So they tend to stick together through all that. It’s kind of a shame it’s got a negative label.

Personally, I’ve never been shut out of the tree house, or told I can’t be in the gang. I thank my parents. I grew up with two sisters, but we went to a co-ed school from kinder to year 12. I’ve always felt as comfortable hanging out with guys as much as girls. I can skip really well, but I can also kick a football.

I think the way Neil French said what he said was bullshit, but I think he also had a point. It’s very hard to do both. I believe in order to be brilliant in advertising, it needs your full attention. If a women in advertising decides she wants to go be brilliant at something else, like being a mum, so what? If there were awards for breast feeding, maybe it would seen as a more worthwhile thing to go and do.

ihaveanidea: I’ve read somewhere that you’re not a big fan of researching creativity, somewhat infamously declaring that a focus group “should only last 32 seconds: 30 to watch the ad and two seconds to react.” Are you still of that mindset?

Emma: Ahhh jeez. Yes, I did say that once, and research says, I’ll never live it down. I said it after sitting behind one-way glass way too may times, watching way too many groups rock up angry and tired after work, pull an idea apart limb by limb, eat free biscuits, get $50 in an envelope and leave. But their first reactions feel like their most honest to me. And if that’s that they hate it then fair enough. I can accept that.

But sometimes, their first reactions are really positive and natural – like laughing, chuckling, smiling etc. It’s just that then, when they’re asked the inevitable, “what don’t you like about this idea?” kind of questions, they seem to get all negative on purpose, because they feel like that’s what they’re being paid for, and I get frustrated, because that’s not how they view ideas at home.

I like researchers. Some of my best friends are researchers. (Actually that’s a lie.)

ihaveanidea: You have an incredible record of championing young talent; you've participated in our Portfolio Night, you lecture at AWARD School, and of course you're a judge in this year's YGAward. What sorts of trends are you noticing with each batch of young creatives that you meet each year? Is technology making them better? Are they losing certain skills that were crucial years ago?

Emma: At the risk of sounding old and grumpy, what amazes me about “young talent” I meet looking for work in the industry, is actually how “talented” they believe they are, without much to back it up.

I’ve meet a lot of guys who are extremely confident, who seem to just expect to walk into a job like that (snaps fingers). And then when you offer feedback, or some dead briefs to work on to show their stuff, maybe help beef up their folios, you never hear from them again. It’s quite crap and disappointing.

That being said, it means the really talented, really passionate, really persistent young talent really stands out. They are generally the ones with excellent ways of looking at the world, what technology can do, and are open to hearing feedback and then doing something with it. Those are the guys that don’t make me grumpy at all.

And are probably already working here.

ihaveanidea: Since I'm assuming it will be the most passionate juniors entering the YGAward, can we expect you to judge the work as harshly and critically as you would the work on a Cannes or Clios judging panel? Don't sugarcoat anything, give to to 'em straight!

Emma: Absolutely. It’s called Young Guns. You don’t just get a prize for being the ‘young’ part.

Interview by: Brett McKenzie, Chief Writer of ihaveanidea
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Paper creativity

Although it seems incredible, this fantastic illustration is made with paper, yes, paper!


Yulia Brodskaya is the author and apart from paper graphics, she surprises with great typographies and graphic designs.



Without doubts, this is an example of creativity to follow. It demonstrates that the creativity may be hidden in the mere materials, and what brings this creativity to life is an idea what do you want to do with them. A simple paper can become a great piece of art.

Yulia Brodskaya

She was born in Russia, where she started her career designing contemporary office decoration for Moscow based companies. At the same time she was studying for the first degree in Graphic Design.

Since 2004 she combined career of an illustrator with a freelance graphic designer work. She won 1st prize in the Russian Conceptual Packaging Design Competition and she is a member of the International Society of Typographic Designers since 2006.
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Real beauty?

As we mentioned before, male and especially female consumers do not like adverts showing perfect models.


FWT-Crew reacted actively by creating an ad busting action. They converted an advert of CDs, launched in Berlin, into a social claim.

The action consists of overlaying the image with stickers of Adobe Photoshop’s interface panels. It makes the message change absolutely. In this form the advert doesn’t sell CDs any more, but it makes people wonder about the real beauty of the pop stars, and about how it is used in advertising.

This ad busting is full of irony and creativity and makes people stop and think about the issue.


FTW-Crew (Mr. Tailon, Baveux Prod., Kone & Epoxy) is a group of street artist who use public space in order to bring to life all kind of social topics and make a social change.

Sources: Barcelona´s Chiringuito, Brand Infection, Cool hunting.