Wales’ women’s economic development agency, Chwarae Teg, has teamed-up with Cardiff-based Wessex Garages to inspire Wales’ next generation of designers and celebrate the charity’s 20th anniversary.

This cooperation is marked by Wessex Garages’ donation of an iconic Fiat 500 to encourage competition entries from female students in Wales to create an inspirational design based on their interpretation of the Chwarae Teg ‘ribbons’ logo.

Wessex Garages is a privately-owned company with locations in Cardiff*, Newport, Bristol and Gloucester, and is known for supporting female employees in their careers as well as creating female friendly dealership environments for their women customers.

The competition will encourage and build female design talent that contributes to the economy and Wales’ perceived intellectual property rankings.

Richard Craythorne (in the photo) is the Fiat brand manager at Wessex Garages and explains:

“We are extremely proud to be associated with the Chwarae Teg Design Contest and the Fiat 500 is an ideal ‘mascot’ to promote the unity between the businesses. The car’s original design in the 1950s was ingenious and promised an exciting new life to those who never had their own transportation before. This promise of a new future (in 2011) has a great synergy with the opportunities Chwarae Teg makes available through its projects, schemes and training courses and I wish all the design competition applicants every success with their entries.”

Katy Chamberlain (in the photo) is the chief executive of Chwarae Teg and she reinforced the synergy between her aims for the competition and the Fiat 500.

“Through the competition we are aiming to inspire students to use their design flair and ambition to help nurture a new generation of world-class female talent in Wales.”

Chwarae Teg’s 20th anniversary celebrations will end with a special three month exhibition at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea coinciding with International Women’s Day on March 8th 2012. The finalists in the design contest will have their work displayed as part of this exhibition and to celebrate the wealth created by women in Wales.

For more information…

The Chwarae Teg Design Contest is open to female students based in Wales who are studying creative disciplines from A-level or equivalent and upwards. Such disciplines could include art, photography, graphic design, fashion and sculpting at school, university or college. The closing date for submissions is Sunday 18th December 2011 and details of how to enter can be found at http://www.chwaraeteg.com/design-contest/

FOXY Steph

Devon businesswoman gets a special award for her ginger ice cream and is commended for her pretty Ford Transit van in the process.

The 1998 model Ford Transit ice cream van, called ‘Ginger’, has helped its owner scoop (haha) one of the top prizes at the 2011 British Street Food Awards.

Ginger’s Comfort Emporium took the award for Best Dessert with a roast banana, salt caramel and peanut flavoured ice cream.   The Ford Transit claimed second place in the Best Mobile category, an award for mobile catering.

Claire Kelsey, founder of Ginger’s Comfort Emporium – which specialises in making distinctive ice cream desserts – created a distinctive new flavour, rhubarb crumble and ginger, in honour of Ford of Britain’s centenary, titled “Ford 99 plus 1” and provided free samples to the first 100 customers to arrive at Vospers Ford dealership in Plymouth.

The judges of the awards included celebrity TV chef, Antony Worrall Thompson who said: “I’m not normally a sweet eater but this is absolutely delicious.  Not only is the ice cream incredibly tasty, the Ford van is actually very pretty too!”

Claire Kelsey was clearly thrilled and added “It’s a dream come true to win this award – I was delighted when the judges announced we’d won Best Dessert. It’s a flavour I’ve been making for quite some time now and it has obviously gone down well with the judges.”

The Ford Centenary Tour ends this month and has covered a distance of over 2,200 miles across Britain, from Inverness to Southampton and Cardiff to London, in celebration of 100 years of Ford of Britain.

FOXY Steph (wishing she was there…)

FOXY Lady blog’s Guest Editor is Ian Williams of Jericho Consulting

Ian Williams was part of the University of Hull’s MBA class of 1999 – I met him at the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s HQ in Cookham for many a weekend’s study programme between 1996 and 1999.  This topic matters to women because considerably more of us (than men) are at Facebook. But will we stay there,  jump ship or have the time to learn and maintain both presences, simply because Google+ is the new kid on the block. One thing is for certain, Google+ will want to be seen as a more female friendly experience than Facebook.

Read what Ian has to say about Google+…

OK – so Google+ is now out of beta testing and is available to everyone. For anyone not in the know; it’s a bit like a cross between Facebook and Twitter. And Facebook are worried, hence the new redesign that everyone hates. Should they be? Hmmm….

Well, I think Google have messed it up…again. Despite them having some great innovations, in the past few years, they have had some major league screw-ups too, especially in the social media field, including Orkut, Buzz & Wave. I fear that G+ will fair no better.

Is G+ superior to FB? Well yes…and no! From a technological design perspective it is better. Once it gets people on there, it allows them to do things that neither Twitter or Facebook can do. “Hang-outs” and “Circles” are a case in point. So that means that they will steal lots of market share from Facebook, right? Sure, they’ll steal some, but I’m not sure how much. Of course, geeks, techies and innovators (Diffusion of Innovation model) will open an account, but will they and others migrate? Here’s why I think not:
…
Firstly, stop with the soft launches Google!
Beta testing is all well and good – it worked for gMail – but we can see what happened with Wave. A brilliant piece of technology that nobody used. Why? It was a functionally brilliant piece of social media software…but it was anti-social. Once you got on, there, it was impossible to find anyone else. I remember going onto Facebook to ask people who was on Wave!! Once I found someone who was, we decided to stay on Facebook to chat anyway! Crazy.

So then, in a blind panic – Google had invested millions of dollars into Wave – they then decided to launch Buzz to everyone with a Google account (probably to gain some leverage for Wave) and ended up breaking every single data privacy law in the book. Using people’s data to give them something they have not asked for – even for free – is a big no-no! So, back to the drawing board…and along came G+…

Secondly, whereas Google seem to understand technology brilliantly, they don’t seem to understand people. From the design of G+, you can see that they simply expected people to “jump” straight off Twitter and Facebook onto G+ overnight. Nuh hu! Ain’t gonna happen. Why? Social media is all about connectivity. On Facebook, I’m connected. Google+ would allow me to do more cool things with my “friends” than Facebook would, but nobody is on there! I sent out loads of invites to connect on G+ and very few of my contacts took it up. And those who did opened an account, used it for a few days, and then finding that none of their friends were on there went back to Facebook.

Let me explain a little more what I mean about connectivity. Google+ allows people to post updates on Google+ that will appear in Twitter and on Facebook. Great! However, it currently doesn’t allow Twitter and Facebook posts to appear automatically on G+. Boooo! People are not going to automatically switch their allegiances overnight and start posting on G+ because their friends are not on there. The people at Twitter and Facebook understood this, which is why they allowed full two-way integration between their two platforms. But at the moment, whereas G+ are quite happy to open this up one-way (utilising Twitter and Facebook’s open APIs), they are not (currently) opening up the other way.

Social Media – rather like successful communication – is all about openness. If G+ were completely open, then people who are fans of Facebook and Twitter would fully integrate their platforms with G+ and, over time – when they slowly work out that G+ is superior – would migrate their time onto G+.

People are creatures of habit, hence all of the uproar about the new Facebook design. You are not going to get them to switch their behaviour onto a new platform overnight, especially if their friends are elsewhere. You are going to have to slowly coax and encourage them. Full integration is, in my opinion, the only way that is going to happen.

Will G+ work? Well, it may do, but I think the good people at Google are going to have to work this one out first. Slowly, slowly, catchy Monkey…

Thank you for this Ian and please keep us posted in future, especially when it’s for or to do with marketing to women.

FOXY Steph

Most female bike riders want to be treated like girls not boys.

Girl Torque is Suzuki’s new website resource for female motorcyclists with news, features, advice and information with a female twist and a women only Track Day launch on 14th September at Donington so we can take to the track and test the latest GSX-R models to suit ourselves.

Suzuki GB’s Michael Le Flay doesn’t see female motorcyclists any differently from male riders but says he understands the subtle differences and challenges faced by females in such a male-dominated pastime.

“For example, riding clothing sizes can be difficult to judge, as much as it may be for for a new rider to understand the differences needed when it comes to seat heights.”

So we women can’t judge clothing sizes or understand getting bike seat heights right… bless!

Even so it’s good to see that Suzuki clearly recognises that women don’t want to be treated like men. Why would we when we’re so different?

But clearly girls who ride bikes are more like men than those of us that buy cars – the name ‘torque’ is a clue that male and female bikers like speed and performance. Women are less interested in chat about torque than men when it comes to buying cars we find.

Vive la difference.

FOXY Steph

Crewe Audi is doing its best to make sure its female customers and their cars are as fit as can be.

Local women drivers can pop in to Crewe Hall’s leisure centre for a fitness check whilst their Audi is having the automotive equivalent in Swansway Group’s garage services.

Gary Tombs from Swansway explains that the Group takes great care of their staff and they really appreciate this. So much so that the Group now wants to market a similarly happy state of mind to their women customers.

So whilst their female customers are waiting for their vehicles to be serviced or MoT’d, they can have their fitness levels checked by trained staff at the nearby health and leisure club. With Swansway’s compliments.

Nice touch we thought.

Family-owned Swansway Group, which operates Crewe Audi, was recognised in the Sunday Times ‘Best Companies to Work For 2011’ list. The group runs three Audi centres, three Honda sites, two VW dealerships, one SEAT, one Peugeot and four VW commercial vehicle centres.

FOXY Steph

Find out about FOXY Choice‘s genuinely female friendly UK garages going that extra mile to please women drivers.

Find out about the free seasonal car fitness checks members of FOXY Lady Drivers Club receive as part of their membership.

Alice and her father Paul Brayley

Brayley Honda car dealership in Hemel Hempstead clearly values the female purse and is doing something about this with a workforce comprising 30% who are women.

Now you might think (like me) that a ratio of 70:30 is still overly male skewed when c80% of all household purchases are made by women but this is the retail motor industry where, according to the Equal Opportunities Commission, women account for less than 10% of the UK workforce. That’s a shocking statistic with so many customer facing roles ideal for  women like Alice, in the photo.

23-year-old Alice Brayley has turned her back on a career in teaching to join her father’s franchised dealership Honda Brayley in Hemel Hempstead. Despite a degree in sociology she chose to join the motor trade following in father’s footsteps. Starting as a sales administrator Alice hopes to move into a management role soon, given the opportunity, once she completes the manufacturer’s management development programme at the Honda Institute in Slough.

The reasons that many women don’t rush to get jobs in the retail motor industry like Alice or to do business with the motor industry as customers aren’t at all complicated. When it comes to buying cars and garage services too many of us are wary shoppers, intimidated by the ‘too blokey’ atmosphere in workshops and showrooms. So imagine what it’s like for young female staff who don’t have Alice’s family business advantages…

As customers, many females worry about being overcharged, patronised and sold things we don’t need. So much so we often feel distinctly ill at ease, take a man with us for support and would prefer to go almost anywhere else. And so we do.

Yet the business case for being a female friendly garage or showroom in her mind is all to do with competitive advantage and word of mouth. Get it right for women and we’ll come more often and tell our friends. This is even more important for businesses selling fleet cars, apparently, where according to the latest RAC Report on Motoring, eight out of ten company cars are chosen by a female. Surely female staff like Alice are better placed than many men to understand what women want and to appreciate why we should get it?

Oh that more manufacturers, dealership and garage groups would recognise the need to achieve a 50:50 gender balance at the very top of their business. The problem is that too few talented females are determined to fight their way to the top in an industry when there are more female friendly industries for us to enjoy and succeed in.

What is needed in virtually all cases is an industry commitment first and foremost and then an individual Board willingness to make the retail motor industry a genuinely more female friendly one. Starting with female Directors including NEDs bringing functional expertise rather than motor industry thinking which is often inclined towards the status quo. And then to make the same progress at senior and then junior management levels.

Until a genuinely female friendly company culture can be seen and felt throughout the retail motor industry, there seems little point encouraging and feeding new female talent in through the front door when they then come up against the same old male dominated status quo and first floor ceiling…

FOXY Steph

Find out which garages and dealerships are marketing to women by subscribing to FOXY Choice‘s female friendly garage marketing services near you.

Crown Paints identify that women are the more likely gender to decide home colour schemes.

What a great job Liz Hickson has.

Liz sits on Crown Paints’ main board and is in charge of their marketing strategy, heading a department of 26 including graphic designers and colour experts.

She was responsible for some early research to identify customer groups so their needs could be met.

Six were identified and called (marketing jargon follows…) Adventurous Confidents; Involved Mainstreamers; Fashion Followers; Experienced Maintainers; Proud Conventionalists; and finally the reluctant ‘Only When I Have To’ group.

I think I’m a bit of all those depending on the occasion…

Crown then planned their Fashion, Function and Home propositions. The Fashion for Walls collection, an annual Colour Influences booklet and the trend for country-style French furniture, spotted in the Fashion Followers group, inspired new product range ‘Le Petit Palais’ for example.

Liz found that consumer packaging needed to have more feminine appeal when marketing to women because they are frequently the decision-makers on colour schemes for the home.

Yet despite its long heritage and high profile, Crown still runs in second place behind market leader Dulux; which for some reason makes me wonder if the Dulux dog image might have something to do with this in a nation of animal lovers...

“We identified an opportunity to communicate more clearly what we stand for.” says Liz. “What we found was that we are seen as approachable and personal – a bit like a family member.”

I am sure this matters to women who like female friendly businesses who understand their needs and appreciate the importance of their business. Which a female strategic marketer is likely to have an insight into of course.

FOXY Steph

Find out about genuinely female friendly FOXY Choice approved UK garages.

I was expecting a nostalgic selection of early 70s music but instead I find that the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has just performed a recital to a packed auditorium of plants to encourage them to grow more. And to market to plant loving women gardeners perhaps?

The three-hour performance in Cadogan Hall, London was performed by a full, 33-member strong orchestra and included Mozart’s famous Symphony Number 40. The recital was commissioned by shopping channel QVC to test the theory that plants grow better when played classical music.

Why not indeed, when we are told that young children learn subjects like Maths better when listening to classical music.

On this occasion the unorthodox and undoubtedly green audience was made up of over 100 different varieties of plants and bulbs including geraniums, fuchsias and perennials which are now available to buy as part of the retailer’s garden offering.

An album based on the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performance has also been released to inspire budding bulbs and pushy plants to grow more. The 45-minute recording titled ‘The Floral Seasons: Music To Grow To’ is available to download for free from the QVC website.

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conductor, Benjamin Pope, comments:
“The audience was the most fragrant we have ever played to although it was slightly unnerving to see row upon row of bowed heads instead of applauding human beings.  Hopefully the sound of classical music resonated with the plants and will result in a genuine growth spurt over the spring months.”

Classical music – and the reverberation of sound waves – is thought to stimulate protein production in plants, which theoretically could lead to increased growth although scientists are divided on the subject.

And no this is not an April’s Fool joke despite the date!

FOXY Steph

I’m with HG Wells’ Buggins character about girls’ names here. He said ‘If ever I was to have a dozen girls, I’d call them all Jane.’

He must have read an earlier version of the book I’ve just put down.

Give a girl an unusual name I find (no real life examples used here for obvious reasons…) and they either have more problems in life or they’re likely to be a tad more tricky to get along with. Which can make marketing to women a challenge, if you don’t take this subject as seriously as you might…

But who can blame us (or them) when you read the names listed in internet surveys as registered around the English speaking world in recent years according to Martin Manser in his funny book ‘Buttering Parsnips.’

Imagine the baggage you’d have to carry around with you if you were called…

Cigarette
Euthanasia
Heaven-Leigh
Lasagna
Latrina
Maybe
Placenta
Tequila or
Vaselina

Believe it or not, these are all supposed to be genuine first names registered in the English speaking world in recent years. As reported by Martin Manser in his book called ‘Buttering Parsnips’.

FOXY Steph

No offence intended. Sense of humour required. Terms and conditions apply. Blame Martin Manser if you like. All UK women drivers are welcome at FOXY Lady Drivers Club… and so on.

When marketing to women, it’s clear that the likes of banks, insurance companies and finance providers can be more female friendly to reach working women in future.

According to a survey carried out by Bright Grey, part of the Royal London Group that specialises in protection insurance products like life assurance and critical illness cover, nearly half the working women interviewed described themselves as the main family breadwinner yet more than one in three don’t have a private pension and nearly one in five has no financial reserves for coping with redundancy or serious illness.

Key household finance decisions are increasingly being made by women, the survey confirms, with 44 per cent of female consumers saying that their family’s finance decisions are mainly taken by them compared to 53 per cent of men. Who to believe most ?

Unsurprisingly we are told that household finance discussions are instigated more by women (61 per cent compared to 57% of men) in keeping with their natural caring and nurturing role.

A spokesman for Bright Grey said “As earnings levels even up and the level of financial responsibility in households is more equally divided, women could be putting themselves at risk by not protecting their income – especially where a household is dependent on their salary.”

This is also important where women live alone or as single parents, who may have taken on credit commitments at Christmas and who could find themselves facing redundancy or serious illness in the years ahead.

Regardless of these worries, Bright Grey warns us that 16 per cent of working females have no savings account and as many as 35% have no private pension either.

I have to add that the females I know are naturally foxy as in shrewd, canny and astute. If they aren’t buying finance products and don’t understand why they should, there is clearly a female service gap to be addressed so the finance industry is seen as more female friendly and approachable in future…

Just as promoting themselves as female friendly is such a BIG business opportunity for garages and franchised dealerships in the motor industry, it seems as if a similar female friendly makeover is overdue in the finance industry too.

FOXY Steph

Finance products like pensions, life and critical illness insurance products are clearly not on the ‘female friendly’ priority list of household purchases for women.