Nobody knows a woman better than her mobile phone

I'm often asked about good examples of tech brands connecting with women. Unfortunately there are very few tech brands that understand what women care about. This new Nokia campaign is a wonderful exception: It invites people to explore the lives of three fictional women in intimate detail and in real time, through their Nokia 7610 smart-phones.

We are invited to follow the lives of the three characters as they make-friends, party, send text-messages to the wrong-boyfriend, break-up, flirt, make-up and do other gripping soap-opera-ish things that somehow nearly always seem to involve the use of mobile technology. The story unfolds through a series of multimedia-messages left by and on the three characters mobile phones. If you've got enough time you can piece together what happened on their latest night out. Nokia clearly hope that this will inspire phone users to use their phones more like Anna, Jade and Luca on their next night out.

I have to confess that I didn't have time to work through the whole campaign - each of the characters have hundreds of messages to work through - but I was impressed by the tasteful design and immersive appeal of the whole thing. It's full of neat touches, like the fact that you can customize the site by activating a number of tastefully selected tunes as the story unfolds - all of which are on sale at the new Nokia music store.

The TV ad and accompanying on-line campaign are great work and seem to be pitched well for a young-adult audience. I think Nokia will need to work really hard if they want to make their products as appealing to the next generation of phone-buyers as Apple's much-hyped iPhone.

What I love about it is they have really understood the role of the mobile phone: "its a window into a woman's life." Women use their phone to film, flirt and play. I'll never forget one woman telling me that no-one knows her as well as her mobile phone. I also love the idea of everyone secretly wanting to be a voyeur and wanting to go through someone's phone. Everyone's curious. I know I am. My new nanny left her phone in my house and I was so tempted to go through her phone to get an insight into who she was. I refrained. But had the phone been in my view for much longer who knows....

Compare this Nokia campaign to the lackluster Blackberry campaign - which looks like a messy pastiche of something Apple might have done five years ago.

The idea is similar 'Life on Blackberry' but suffers from a lifeless execution which is unsure of it's target audience. It's little more than a visual idea and sadly lives and dies only on TV. Nokia's latest campaign was born to span all media and truly captures the intimacy that women feel towards their phone.

For all of the project's interactivity it's not truly interactive: As far as I'm aware fans cannot text their favorite characters and get involved with them... the character's facebook page has a kind of ghostly silence that contrasts wrongly with the fast-paced hedonism of the main campaign web-site. Users seemed to be confused as to whether these are real people or merely actors playing characters - how very post-modern to blur that line.

Lastly, I think Wieden could have promoted the idea a bit harder. It feels like they have missed the opportunity to release this via bloggers and create a real buzz around the campaign. For all the work they have done it would be a shame if this became the best campaign that nobody got to see.

Love to hear your thoughts. 

The Dream of the Paperless Office

A couple of years ago I had a debate with a colleague at the UN World Summit on the Information Society about the paperless office. I voiced my frustration that despite of the fact that we now do so much online, we still print so much paper. I wondered if the paperless office would remain a dream. My colleague said that people just have to try it seriously but so far they have not. We then talked about how society has to adapt to technological change and how this might take time. That was in 2005. What we did not know then is that since 2001 the paper consumption in the US was according to the Economist declining. While the paperless office is an idea of the 1960s, it has never really caught on – despite of the fact that new technologies like the Internet did not seem to rely on paper. However what happened is that many people printed their emails and treated them just like paper letters which were delivered via email rather than a postal service. People need to adapt to new technologies and need time to change their established behaviours. The decline of paper usage is linked to the rise of a new generation. Generation Y or the millennials grew up with new technologies like the Internet and many of them adopted Web 2.0 applications readily. They do things online. They are not only paying their bills online but also network online. This younger generation is confident in reading on screen and filing documents virtually rather than physically. All is tagged and stored in the virtual cloud. According to the Economist not all paper consumption is declining because people are still keen on printing for the special occasion. Sometimes it seems that good ideas just need time to develop. It needs time until people adapt or rather until the younger generations get rid of many routines and practices that influence how we interact with technology.

Every Brand Needs an Enemy

Adam Morgan writes very eloquently about the value of monsters and the value they have in stories: raise the stakes, add drama and conflict and most importantly give the 'hero' an adversary and position the hero as being the virtuous one to save the day. An enemy is a threat to you, but a monster is a threat to the larger community. Adam then goes on to talk about how "small human brands fight a large and faceless monsters" with the example of brands who have explicitly created monsters in order to position themselves as the champion of the community.

Dove's monster is the artificial fashion industry. Richard Branson's monster is BA, Sky and the Goliaths. Method's monster is toxicity. Apple's monster is Microsoft (explicitly shown in their latest campaign.) Google's monster is evil. Nintendo's monster is Sony & Microsoft.

Do all brands need a monster, an enemy to fight, metaphorically or physically? Is it a common enemy - or is simply something that coalesces us into a concerted action with one another? And are brands that have a shared 'agenda' whatever that agenda might be, are they more appealing to women?

The academic and autism specialist Simon Baron Cohen writes: women tend to empathise, men tend to systemise.

"The female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems. Systemising and empathising are different kinds of processes. You use one process - empathising - for making sense of an individual's behaviour and identifying others feelings and responding to them. Systemising - is about analysing and constructing a system and predicting. They are not mystical processes but are grounded in our neurophysiology."

Based on this premise, it seems women are likely to respond to a situation where they can identify with the feelings of others. A community that they can feel part of. A movement that they can belong to. A safe haven for them and for those around then. In short, a shared agenda.

Every brand might not necessarily a monster, but to connect with women, they certainly need an ally.

The Topshopisation of Tech

I am sure people are bored of me eulogising about my Asus eee 901. Now I have a new Asus product to rave about: the Asus S101- the Macbook Air that you can actually afford.

It retails at $699 for the 16GB Windows version or 30GB for the Linux version, that's less than half the price of the "designer" product which it is imitating. This is great, for the same reason that Topshop is great.

Topshop is well known as the retailer that is famous for selling cheap clothes that look almost exactly designer styles. It's uncanny how quickly they manage to replicate every season's look.

The reason that Topshop's clothes are so cheap is that unlike the original designer product, they are only intended to last for exactly one season. Is that a problem? It depends on whether you like old clothes.

In the past a laptop was like a very expensive designer dress; It cost so much you'd want to get a lot of wear out of it. You could buy a cheaper laptop but it would look unfashionable - not the sort of thing you'd want to be seen in. The new "netbooks" are different: They look great, they turn heads but they are still cheap.

When fashion becomes disposable it changes the way we think about it. I used to carry my old Powerbook in a custom-made hand-decorated case. These days I carry my Asus in whatever I have with me.

A handbag or an M&S carrier-bag. Anything will do. I haul it around like a piece of meat and I will discarded it when it's no longer of any use. It will be 'upgraded' within a year and then forgotten.

Rory Sutherland commented,

"The point is that it is cheap enough not to worry about all that much. As a result you discover that, never mind the weight and size, a £200 laptop is simply more portable than a £1,000 laptop. For instance you can carry it around in a carrier bag, not in a padded case."

A government survey found that the majority of Britons believe that most products are not designed to last a lifetime. Sixty-five per cent feel that products do not last as long as they did 25 years ago, and that even larger items like washing machines will only last a few years before they must be replaced.

While others lament the passing of a 'slower' society the unmistakable fact is that people are quite comfortable with planned obsolescence.

Who amongst us has a phone older than two years? Even if you could make a phone last that long would you really want one that old?

If you wouldn't use a three year old phone, would you want a three year old laptop? When was the last time you wore three year old clothes?

A laptop is no longer for life, but could be just for Christmas.

The Battle for my Handbag

Nintendo's new DS will feature a camera, possibly a bigger pair of screens (both of which will be touch-sensitive) and a slightly improved WiFi system. I'd expect at least one surprise – my bet will be some kind of motion-sensor.

Naturally some people will be disappointed that the platform's features will still be low-end or that it does not include a free magic-pony, but its hard to please everyone. Nintendo have always been very good at incremental updates. This will be another money-maker.

The real question I have is not whether people will buy it, but whether people will carry it – the electronics market is flooded with pocket-sized devices.

And the more interesting question is what would you leave behind in order to take you DS with you? Would you leave behind your digital camera because Nintendo have built one into the DS? If the new DS had a good enough web-browser might you leave behind your laptop? What's the hierarchy of technologies for your handbag?

Ultimately it comes down to who your competition is. Whilst most brands look to their immediate competition, the woman on the street does not view her competition by category. Nintendo will be competing with the obvious rival Sony but will also be competing with everything in a women's handbag: Keys, Digi-cam, Purses, Phones, Laptops, Music-Players, Sunglasses and make-up.

Jan Chipchase has done some interesting work in this area. Keys, cash and mobile phone are considered essentials irrespective of culture and gender. Keys and money provide access to shelter, food and warmth whilst the phone enables convenient communication with someone who can provide access to these. Forgetting these when shifting to one situation to the other is the most critical thing for most people.

I often pick up my overfilled handbag and leave stuff out and my DS is usually the one that gets eliminated first. Then in order: my Bluetooth headset, my mini laptop, camera, paper notebook, any baby toys/dummies and finally paracetamol. My phone, purse and make-up (vain I know) are the things I take everywhere.

Whilst Nokia and Apple have been banking on the importance the phone hence turning it into a hand held gaming platform, there's an interesting piece of work to be done understanding which items women are prepared to be loyal to and those they are prepared to abandon.

As we begin the quest for loyalty beyond reason, the battle of the handbags begins.

What's in your handbag and what's your handbag hierarchy?