Women love inspirations – and Pinterest organizes all those wonderful idea-starters that we used to tear out of magazines and stuff into notebooks and drawers.  I got it immediately.  For every house we have built or remodeled, I had very detailed inspiration photos that helped shape our new homes.  It’s even better than our own because we get to see our friend’s inspirations as well!

Real Simple magazine recently reported that it drove more traffic to their website than Facebook.  Pretty incredible.  Big name brands are jumping in – folks like Nordstrom’s, Land’s End, Etsy and more.  Some people say “Pin it” is the new “Google it”.

Pinterest now has more than 7 million unique visits per month. Pinterest drives more referral traffic (3.6%) than YouTube (1.05%), Google+ (0.22%), and LinkedIn (0.2%) combined, according to Shareaholic’s January 2012 Referral Traffic Report.  Okay, so Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google and Twitter still do a pretty incredible job.  But here is some of the power of Pinterest.  Collecting images rules at Christmas. Pinterest grew 44% from 2.5% of referral traffic in December 2011, after owning just 0.17% of the traffic in July 2011.

It looks like Pinterest users are primarily women (70%) because it is a place to house all of their interests.  But men could find it useful for do it yourself or home projects.

How Should Business Use It

Business should make sure all of their content includes terrific visuals that lend themselves to be pinned.  Make sure you know how to use Pinterest and use it consistently so that you are visible.  You can curate your content on boards that make it easy to find things.

Happy Pinning!

In January, First Lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack unveiled new standards for school meals that will hopefully result in healthier meals for kids across the nation. The new meal requirements should improve the health and nutrition of nearly 32 million kids that participate in school meal programs every school day.

Here’s a great infographic about children being targeted by media and advertisers. It was created by some smart folks at the University of Southern California at MAT@USC and Teach.com.

Two out of three health care dollars spent by women

There is not a lot of healthcare specific research about women and their healthcare opinions.  That’s unfortunate since 80-90% of all healthcare decisions are made or influenced by women.  Also some 2/3 of women feel that they are misunderstood by healthcare marketers. And two out of three healthcare dollars are spend by women.  I thought it would be helpful to compile some great facts that can help guide marketers who realize the importance of marketing healthcare to women.

1.  Majority of decisions are made by women.  Here’s an overview from a 2010 article in Time magazine: ”Women make the primary health care decisions in two-thirds of American households. They account for 80 cents out of every dollar spent in drugstores and are likelier than men to choose the family’s health insurance. Even when both parents work, wives shoulder 75% of domestic responsibilities, including making the kids’ doctor appointments and getting them there on time. “Women are the main brokers of health care in the United States,” says Dr. William Norcross, a family physician and faculty member at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. “This has long been the case and is probably true elsewhere in the world too.”

2.  Healthcare is generational.  Caregivers may be moms, daughters, wives or sisters.  There is some thought that because women stay more connected to health providers because of childbearing, they stay more in tune with the importance of the regular checkups and take the responsibility for their family.  For marketers, it is important to recognize the role of caregivers by speaking to them.  Currently some 75% of baby boomers are involved in raising their grandchildren.  And Millennial Moms are counting on their moms for help in making decisions.

3.  Emotion in advertising reigns over rational thinking.  We all know that most of typically buy with emotion and rationalize the purchase with facts.  But in healthcare, there is so much that we can’t know.  Recently I conducted focus groups with hospital users.  The truth is that the only thing that hospital patients can actually measure is care, concern, responsiveness, respect, and outcome.  They want to see authenticity in advertising – true stories, people like themselves.

4.  Using the color pink is not marketing to women.  So many times, the solution for making an ad targeted to women is to use women in the photography, use pink in some scripty logo and resort to cliche phrases.  No doubt that Susan G. Komen has taken the color pink to a new level and now owns the color pink.  When you can get NFL players to wear pink cleats and get the White House to light up pink, you are on to something.  But as the past few days have shown, a brand represents more than just a color.   For marketers, pink is not a strategy, it’s a stereotype.   There is a study that actually says that when we use the color pink connected to cancer, women know it is dedicated to them and subconsciously go into denial. The point here is that wrapping your product in pink and bling does not mean marketing success.  Women want to be able to see themselves or their need expressed in the advertising.

5.  Families are not nuclear anymore.  Today, 41% of all births today are to unwed mothers.  We are finding that today’s family is not the typical two parents and two children anymore.  More women are the head of household.  A 2010 Pew Research survey found that 52% of Millennials say being a good parent is “one of the most important things” in life. Just 30% say the same about having a successful marriage — meaning there is a 22-percentage-point gap in the way Millennials value parenthood over marriage. If you are marketing healthcare to women, don’t rely on traditional family photos, and don’t forget the importance of diversity.

6.  Smartphones rule.  If you haven’t noticed, smartphones now comprise one out of every three phones.  And with this easy access, 16.9 million access health information through mobile devices.  Some 17% used their phones look up health or medical news.  That number marks a 125 percent growth rate over the same three month period in the previous year. The research firm comScore found that about 3 in 5 or 60 percent of the mobile health information seekers were under the age of 35.

7.  Social media is Word of Mouth!  A recent study from Lucid Marketing and HeardItFromAMom.com confirmed how women share health information.  The report finds that technology that connects friends is a top choice for moms seeking health-related information.  The research shows that  84 percent of Moms often share health related information via email and 69 percent often share via Facebook. Email and Facebook are also the places where they most often hear recent news – email (83 percent) and Facebook (76 percent). And here is the most important stat – 63% of Moms believe word-of-mouth received from other moms and 56% are likely to pass it along.

8.  Peer to peer recommendations have more weight than national awards. Yes, awards can be important but given a choice between Healthgrades and your best friend, women will choose the best friend’s advice.  In fact, they may prefer any peer recommendation more.  Holly Buchanan, coauthor of The Soccer Mom Myth – Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys, notes that women tend to have a “longer checklist” of important factors when shopping, which explains why Web sites with a healthy selection of reviews fare better among women shoppers. “The copy in the review is talking about things further down the checklist that the actual product review does not cover,” Buchanan points out.  A preference for peer-to-peer recommendations on products and purchasing goes beyond the company Web site for many women consumers. A BlogHer study also determined that 35 percent of women trust a product review from a blogger more than a user-generated review on a company Web site. Falling shortly behind was a status update from a friend via social media.  According to Quandcast, about 23 million American women are weekly readers of or contributors to blogs, while 16.8 million maintain a consistent presence on message boards and forums.

9.  All research starts online.  Women go online first to gather information.  In every healthcare study I conduct, I find out the number of women online researching is growing.  We don’t seem to buy anything without gathering information first.  So for marketers, that means that your brand presence and the content you provide is crucial.  And they compare your website with the all-star sites like Mayo Clinic, WebMD and Cleveland Clinic.  Keeping your website up-to-date and informative is crucial.  Also having a presence on social media is important.  And having a regular flow of publicity is crucial.

10.  Digital advertising is very important because women are online.  Digital advertising is still not included on many healthcare campaigns.  I know, it’s incredible, isn’t it?  When your target is online 24/7, you have to have a presence in search engines and in online advertising.  Women are actually more engaged online than men are.  And those digital ads should lead you to important information, videos, instruction and more valuable content.

The report defines the new connected consumer as a woman 40 years old, earning $63,000 a year, who owns several Web-ready devices. She’s all over Facebook, loves to browse catalogs and is oh-so-happy to shop via her devices. 

Retailers will have to learn what device lends itself  to particular purchases.  For instance, in this study on online purchases, tablets were used by more those making electronic or toy purchases, while smartphones are more frequently used for music purchases.  And these connected consumers have no problem with shopping on Facebook.

Check out this infographic on the connected consumer:

But do you remember the original criticism about the iPad?  Less than two years ago, critics said  women will never buy them because the name sounds like a giant Kotex.  Well, surprise, surprise.

Women compose half of tablet users and they are buying tablets at a faster rate.

There are 34 million tablet users in the U.S., and 83% of them are using an iPad.  Women currently account for slightly less than half of tablet users but they are catching up quickly.  We probably make up the difference in the amount of shopping we do.

63% of tablet owners in the US have made a purchase using their device, compared to just 31% of smartphone owners, according to a study released in November 2011 by Jumptap in partnership with comScore. 

The top three products and services that are bought using mobile devices (including tablets) are event tickets, daily deals from sites such as Groupon and Living Social, and apparel, according to the Jumptap report. Travel, physical copies of books, games, and movies round out the top 5.

Jumptap’s findings align with results from a March 2011 study from the e-tailing group and Coffee Table, which found that tablet users are more likely than smartphone users to engage in online buying and/or browsing on a daily, weekly, several times per month, and monthly basis. The study also indicated that tablet users are more likely than smartphone users to say they have made 3 to 5, 6 to 10, and more than 10 online purchases in the last six months.

Tablet shoppers rule.  A recent Wall Street Journal article found that users who browse e-commerce websites on tablets are more likely to make purchases than other online shoppers. The study found the conversion rate was 3 percent for PC shoppers, and 4 to 5 percent for tablet shoppers.

And here’s the good news – they are educated, employed and economically privileged.

• 51% of iPad owners are college grads as opposed to 28% of the average US citizen
• 62% of iPad owners have full-time jobs compared to 44%
• 50% of iPad owners earn over $100k as opposed to 11.5%

What does all this tablet shopping mean?

1.  Optimize your website for tablets.

2.  And make sure you have lots of pictures because we buy from pictures.  And we might want to pin them to our Pinterest page.  iPads are our new stack of magazines and catalogs.

3.  App time?  Maybe you should think about an app for your users – or for your users’ children.

4.  Start thinking about your holiday strategy for tablets next year.  You will need one.

11.  Ten Things You Need to Know about E-books.  One of the best books I read in 2011 was Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff.  I downloaded it on my iPad and got to thinking about some of the incredible shifting world of book consumption.  So here’s an update.  Half of all tablet purchases have been made by households with children under 18, according to Forrester Research. And that doesn’t include e-readers, where women already dominate – 63% versus 37% of men own e-readers.

10.  12 Outrageous Facts I Learned at M2Moms.  I am still reeling from some of the great info at M2Moms.  Probably the most dramatic is the number of births of children occurring outside of marriage.  Forty-one percent of births are to unwed Moms, and when you look at just millennial moms, the percentage rises to 50%.  I think this trend has unbelievable impact on society and how were define families.

9.  Moms Won’t Deprive Family of Vacation This Year.  This 2010 poll looked at Moms attitudes towards the family vacation.  Travel began to rebound in 2010 but American workers are still somewhat reluctant to take too much vacation.  Only 57% of U.S. workers use up all of the days they’re entitled to, compared with 89% of workers in France, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found,  according to CNN.com.  Some 64% of employed Moms were optimistic about actually taking all their paid vacation in 2011.

8.  Tablet is Most Important Device We Own.  Women are beginning to use tablets for shopping in a major way. Sixty percent of users shopped for the holidays with their smartphone or tablet.  Mobile shoppers consider it a type of “mobile mall”, purchasing products and comparing prices.  Home usage of tablets is now greater than out-of-home usage.

7.  The Mother and Daughter Shopping Experience.  This is a really interesting subject.  Moms and daughters may call it retail therapy, but it’s actually an important bonding and socialization activity.  One particular group who share shopping preferences are Baby Boomer Moms and Millennial Daughters who spend time together and value their relationship.

6.  51%.  Just a number?   Professional and entrepreneurial women are 51% of the workforce and 51% of small business owners.  Women are not just consumers; we are business leaders and we are heads of households.  Unfortunately, we are not represented in the same way in America’s boardrooms.

5.  Only One in Five Groupon Users Return.    This has been a rocky year for Groupon.  With the proliferation of group buying deals, both retailers and buyers are trying to find the best way to use Groupons.

4.  iPhone Moms:  A Growing Target Audience.  Can we say obsession?  That’s the relationship that iPhone Moms have with their phone.  See our Lipstick Economy and Social Moms study showing Social Moms prefer sleep and their smartphone over sex.

3.  Marketing to Women:  How Many Use QR Codes?  Fad or fantastic?  They are part of our shopping experience.  57% of consumers who have scanned a QR code say they did nothing with the information, compared to 21% who shared the information with someone and 18% who made a purchase, according to  a survey released in January 2012 by Chadwick Martin Bailey.  Top reason for scanning a QR code?  Curiosity.

2.  The Demographics of Groupon and Living Social.  There are definitely differences in the two users.  So what is the demographic for Deal Chicken?  Now that there are hundreds of daily deal sites, will 50% become the standard for discounts?

1.  Groupon or Groupoff?  10 Facts You Need to Know.  Drumroll please.  The Year of  Groupon. But will daily deals continue to hold the fascination of marketers?   Yes, they raised $700 million in a limited IPO.  But the value of the company is half of what it was just a few months before.  There may be 600 competitors, but no one knows exactly because some 25% of them have already bit the dust.  Are we suffering Groupon Fatigue? What do you think the marketing story of the year for 2012 will be?

Happy Reading, you amazing group of Lipstick Economists!

Sometimes we alter our Top Ten to other numbers like our Top Three, but beware.  Rick Perry couldn’t remember his third point.  Seems we love the theological rightness of  three, seven and ten.

Some of the reasons we love Top Ten lists?

1.  Lists are recipes for life.  It seems that top ten lists help bring order to our lives.  Ten Reasons To Go On Vacation!  That’s the list that I want right now.  Ten Apps to Make You Rich.   We like the black and white, how to psychology of lists.

2.  Lists help us remember things of importance.  Unless you are Rick Perry, that is.  But organized people love lists and those little checklists allow us to compare ourselves with others.

3.  Lists give importance to random subjects.  Who wants to see the 357th all-time favorite movie?  Not me, I want to know what the top ten, or top 100 movies, books and albums are.

4.  Lists give prestige to  list makers.  David Letterman and Time Magazine know this well.  The person or group making the list gains reputation.  Benjamin Franklin was a great  list maker and it seemed to work well for him.  Franklin biographer Walter Isaacson in Time magazine said, “Franklin loved making lists. He made lists of rules for his tradesmen’s club, of synonyms for being drunk, of maxims for matrimonial happiness and of reasons to choose an older woman as a mistress. Most famously, as a young man, he made a list of personal virtues that he determined should define his life.”

5.  Lists help us focus.  Anyone can tell you that just making a list makes us feel we have accomplished something.  I love lists.  I love making them and crossing things off.  It’s a sense of order and accomplishment.

6.  Lists are a cure for procrastination.  GIving order to a really big task helps us work through it.  But a true procrastinator will make a list to keep from doing the work.

7.  Lists are an easy read.  For those who long for the quick answer, a list is usually navigated by numbers or bullet points, and the lack of long text make them undeniably tasty like short headlines and soundbites.

8.  Good lists are controversial.  Why?  Because you are putting your list out there so it can be compared to others mental lists.  If you don’t think “Feelings” is the all time worst lounge song of all time, you get to insert your own personal choice.  Best Dressed and Worst Dressed Lists are inevitable favorites after Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and all those other awards shows.

1.  Forty-four percent of Millennial Moms think marriage is obsolete.  It seems that marriage is no longer considered a societal role imposed upon women, but rather a choice they make.  Some 41% of all births are now to unwed mothers, and that number rises to 51% when considering just Millennial Moms.  This is a trend that will have long-lasting repercussions in our society.  (Rose Cameron, Euro RSCG Chicago, Parenting by Millennials).

2.  Fifty percent of women Facebook their birthing event.   Those video cameras in birthing rooms have been replaced by eager Moms who Facebook the event for all their friends to read and see in real-time.  As these Facebook babies grow up, maybe those photo galleries will be harder to find than those old VHS tapes that earlier generations saved.   (Rose Cameron, Euro RSCG Chicago, Parenting by Millennials)

3.  Musings on the usage of iPads by children: “A magazine is an app that does not work for a one year old.”  Probably the best quote of the conference.  Rose Cameron showed a fun video of a one year old who kept punching a magazine photo trying to get it to do something.  This was proof that children today are growing up with a totally different adaptation to technology, not to mention babysitting.  Maybe these little digital natives are Steve Jobs most lasting legacy.

4.  The Era of Gender Surrender.  I have never heard more research catch phrases and twisted trend terms in my life, but this is one that rings true.   Parenting roles are being redefined, and 33% of dads are taking on the roles of traditional moms.  The shared responsibilities and Stay At Home Dads are a target audience for marketers to consider.  And the poster child of this new Dad is the fictitious Daniel Lee of Google Chrome advertising.  As you might expect, a side note to this is more women are feeling responsibility for the finances of the household.  (Missy Maher and Jennifer Babbit Bodner, Edelman, Modern Family).

5.  Grandmothers are Second Parents.   Several of the presenters talked about those active, vital grandparents and the huge influence these grandparents are making on the lives of their grandchildren, and on purchase decisions for those children.  These very vibrant and well-healed Boomers are large in the lives of their grandchildren, with some 75% of Boomer grandparents involved in the raising of their grandchildren, and using that disposable income on Junior. Conversely, marketers have somehow totally ignored the purchase power of grandparents. Just as important as their debit card, Boomer Moms also have the strongest bonds with their Millennial Daughters.

6.  Smartphone has allowed Moms to work at home, at the playground and in carpools.  This robust new era of work at home Moms who are professional bloggers, entrepreneurs and freelancers owe their new freedom to their supportive be-all-you-can-be upbringing and their ability to conduct business anywhere with a smartphone.  Guess that’s a second legacy piece for Steve Jobs.

7.  Ninety percent of Moms go online for “me time.”  Soap operas and chick lit are out, and social online time is in for Moms needing a little refuge from the Mom World.  Going online helps fill Mom’s needs for social interaction, self-sufficiency and bargain hunting.  But beware, some 36% are getting bored with what their friends had for dinner last night and are looking for more fulfilling news and content.  Sixty-three percent of Moms read articles posted by others, 35% share what they are reading, and 35% post content that others share.  (Lauren Weinberg, VP Strategic Insights & Research, Yahoo!)

8.  Millennial Moms are more isolated than past generations and social media fills a need.  Only 19% of moms today raise their child in the community in they grew up.  And as their network of friends is more far-flung, social media fills a real need.  Many moms have two Facebook identities.  Nine out of ten moms Facebook; three out of five Tweet; and three out of five blog.  (Stacy DeBroff, Founder & CEO, Mom Central Consulting.)

9.  Two-thirds of moms trust reviews of those they have never met. The Recommendation Culture Rules.  Moms are becoming less brand loyal and more review loyal.  Moms are likely to switch brands if friends love it and recommend it, and the brand will help them save money.

10.  Boomer Moms are paying for 59% of adult children’s cellphones.  Boomer moms are spending 84% more than their moms did on them.  Boomer moms pay for 53% of insurance, 39% of rent, 38% of travel and 33% of computers for adult children 18-30.  Some 40% spend more than $5,000 per year on their adult child 18-30 years old, and the Boomers don’t even know when is the right time to stop subsidizing their children’s household. (Stephen Reily, Founder, VibrantNation.com, The “Graduate” Mom.)

11.  The Zero Moment of Truth is the overlooked part of today’s purchase funnel.  Today’s shopper uses twice as many sources of information on products before making a purchase decision.  On average, shoppers consulted 5.2 sources in 2010, and that number has doubled to 10.4 sources in 2011.  To take advantage of this new reality, marketers must provide multiple opportunities for shopper to find out information on your brand, find consumer reviews on your brand, and find product comparisons.  Whether the purchase is made online or offline is not as important as where the research is done.  (Jim Lecinski, Author Chief ZMOT Evangelist and Managing Director of US Sales, Google, and John Ross, CEO, Shopper Sciences)

12. Seventy-five percent of Moms don’t think marketers understand them.  It seems that most marketing is still steeped in the Leave it to Beaver era, not recognizing the diversity or the composition of families.  But even more important are the needs of today’s moms and how marketers really speak to the important roles that moms feel are their job today.  What moms like are marketers that speak to their heart, helping them solve problems and facilitate their role as mom. (Laura Salant, What Moms Really Care About, about.com)

I had the privilege of hearing writers like Clyde Edgerton, Walter Mosley, and Charles Frazier  read and discuss writing and their works.  I am sure it is a bit of a lab experiment for the writers, being poked and dissected like some biology specimen.  But it is very personal to their fans who have a very intimate relationship with them through words.

Ann Patchett asked to forego the usual introduction, comparing it to listening to one’s own obituary.  Not only is Ann Patchett a beloved Nashville writer but she is also gaining universal Nashville affection for bringing back an offline bookstore to my own neighborhood.   After the recent demise of both independent and chain bookstores, Nashville is currently a book culture desert.  Of course, we can order books from Amazon and download our Kindles and iPads, but the days of our beloved book friends like Stephanie Freudenthal at Davis Kidd Bookstores are gone.  Ann said she came to the Festival this year, not as a writer, but as a bookseller, defending that personal relationship that exists between a reader seeking a new book and the guide who helps them with such a find.

Ann entertained us with a wonderful new discovery – a conversation with Edith Pearlman, a small elegant woman, whose newly published collection of short stories Binocular Vision is itself an elegant treat.  But what interested me the most was the power of discovery and sharing discoveries with others.  Ann met Edith when she was editing Best American Short Stories and selected two of her stories for the 2006 annual collection.  With much admiration for her work, Ann wrote an introduction to Edith’s book which her publisher used to promote the book – not the book but the Ann Patchett preface.

Some may wonder what will happen to the printed word, but this is where the clarity comes in.  As long as there are those like Ann Patchett who believe in the important gift of discovery, the written and printed word will continue.  Oh yes, we will download some books from Amazon, but just like vinyl records have made a comeback, cookbooks are an obsession and sewing is an artisan craft, so books will remain cherished, shared and passed on to others in gestures of generosity.

I wandered around the Festival book table, hungry to pick up these 20th Century artisan products.  And to protect my literary planet, I purchased three real printed books on Saturday, my own personal vote for the continuing fellowship of readers and writers. I hope to run in to you at Ann’s new bookstore Parnassus.  Let’s hope the Muses inhabit it!

Postscript:  Ann Patchett has opened a fabulous new bookstore Parnassus Books in Nashville.  Even the New York Times covered the opening.  In my daughter’s words, “It’s a beautifully curated bookstore.”  Translation:  It has all the books I would want to read, and none of those that are not important.

Here’s one that many moms can relate to:  More than half of the moms surveyed — 51% — said a full night’s sleep was the most important thing in their life — next to their children and significant other. Interestingly, smartphones and coffee ranked higher  than sex among this group.  Ask a few of the Moms you know – they will probably agree.

Social Moms are much more connected than the average American, making the study unique in understanding some of the most active, influential women in social media.  The study gives a unique perspective of influential segment of moms who use social media as their lifeline, both at home and on the go.

Social Moms Sphere of Influence:  More than 1,000 Twitter Followers and 100-500 Facebook Friends