• by June 3, 2004

Yahoo!'s roadshow highlighting research on women and their Web usage habits hit New York City this morning. If you haven't heard about the study, you'll want to get invited to a Yahoo! presentation in your city.

The research, "Real Women. Digital World. The Untold Story of Women & The Web," was commissioned by Yahoo! and conducted with Publicis Groupe's Starcom MediaVest Group, TNS Market Research and Just Ask A Woman. Though MediaPost's MediaDailyNews reported on the findings of this important study a few weeks ago, we found the "live" presentation worthwhile. Some of the more interesting observations were offered by Mary Lou Quinlan, the vivacious founder and CEO of Just Ask A Woman.

Mary Lou's company conducts Oprah-style focus groups (and by her own account, they don't resemble your mother's focus group!), to glean what women think and feel, and how they approach their time-starved lives. She says that many media professionals find it easy to pigeon-hole women online. Women can be found not only on female-oriented, family and parenting sites, but shopping for consumer electronics, appliances and travel, and on news venues. Her qualitative research finds that women are media-grazers online and offline.

Women, the research finds, are "cyber-Sybils" with multiple personalities, something the study addresses at length. In fact, while women enjoy participating in communities of interest on the Web, they also love the anonymity of the medium and often establish multiple screen names, particularly in the online dating arena. Women online are "surchers"-they search and surf. They're not passive!

TNS' quantitative research found that 90 percent of the women surveyed said they shopped online; 43 percent regularly purchase items online; and 41 percent of women prefer shopping online over shopping at physical store locations. All the more reason for online retailers to provide informed concierge services via instant messaging.

Mary Lou mentioned The Knot. It's an online community primarily for women and their prospective mates to conduct wedding preparation. "The Knot is the real community of the future," she says, citing the site's ability to offer diverse features and serve a set of common passions and interests.

Another interesting point raised by Mary Lou and emphasized by Brenda McFarland, EVP, strategic marketing, TNS, is that women's use of the media is multi-dimensional so Web advertising should be multi-dimensional and integrated with offline campaigns.

Speaking of road shows, a new road show effort led by Joe Jaffe, president-jaffe, a new media consultancy, will showcase online creativity--how to facilitate and maintain it.

The "Battle for the Heart" Creative Roadshow will hit 8 major markets between August and November. "There are those who say the quality of creative online is sorely lacking; others believe that the great work is out there, but we just never gave ourselves enough credit," Joe says in a statement. "My hunch is that it's a little of both and that's precisely why I've put together the industry's first creative event dedicated to the betterment of, evolution of, and commitment to online creativity."

Yahoo! has sponsored a creative summit for two years in a row--it's also taken the show on the road. We say the more, the merrier. Online creative needs to be a burning issue now that streaming video on the Web is coming on strong.

Maybe Mary Lou put it best today when she said, "Why is it that the Internet is the creative stepchild of the agency?"