Captivating Connections.

ladies, who is your favorite celeb spokesperson?

Brands often put a lot of emphasis into their celebrity spokesperson, especially since there's a lot of risk involved when you choose to have a high-profile person represent your brand.

According to a new analysis from Women at NBCU’s Brand Power Index, it's not about finding the person who perfectly fits your brand anymore; it's about finding that person who is irrevelent and catches someone's attention, an unexpected mashup.

As Melissa Lavigne-Delville, VP/ insights for NBCUniversal Integrated Media, explains, "Unexpectedness is resonating with women. The biggest movers this quarter were brands with a surprising celebrity spokesperson, like rock legend Bon Jovi for Advil. It was this unusual pairing of celebrity and brand that gained the most traction among women.”

Check out the brands that made big moves up the Brand Power Index, using spokespeople:

• Kinect for Xbox 360 used a handful of different famous faces, including musician Selena Gomez, actor David Hasselhoff (who makes appearances in both a chicken suit and cheerleading outfit) and Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster, with an assist from Elmo. The brand leapt 119 notches up the 500-brand index.

• Minute Maid jumped 121 spots on the index, powered by Ty Burrell, who plays the hapless husband Phil Dunphy on “Modern Family.” (In the spots, he loses a stare-down competition with a navel orange.)

• Retailer The Gap rose 49 spots, using YouTube’s 11-year-old star, Maria Aragon, in its holiday commercial, “I Want Candy.” (The tween’s cover of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” has over 47 million hits.)

Ladies, who is your favorite celeb spokesperson?

cartoons aren't only for kids; they're for lipstick (and nail polish too!).

There's an interesting trend emerging in the cosmetics category, with cartoon charachters adorning the packaging of cosmetics. This seems to be inspired (and driven) by a few things:

1. In crappy economic times women turn to makeup as a cheap pick-me-up that makes them feel better.

2. Wrapped (literally) in that splurge is the desire for physical beauty, which can be manifested in pretty packaging.

3. When the package itself projects a sense of excitement, beauty, and whimsey, the outside is almost as important as the inside!

MAC is a great example is the trend: "The brand introduced the Wonder Woman collection, with oversize compacts and lipglosses, last February; an online-only Miss Piggy collection the following November; a Venomous Villains collection in September 2010 (featuring some evil Disney characters like Cruella De Vil); and a Hello Kitty collection, with sleek black and pink packaging, in 2009."

What do you think? Is it nostalgia? Novelty? What do you think?

apparently ladies DO run the world (of purchase decisions).

There are a few key targets marketers and advertisers have always aimed for, knowing that they influence key purchase decisions. You've read about the 'pester power' of kids and how women are the 'household CEOs'.

Fleishman-Hillard International and Hearst Magazines proves this later point with a new study, finding that "54% of American women believe it’s their responsibility to help their friends and family make smart purchase decisions, and a similar number said they regularly influence friends and family to buy or not buy a product or service. When the first study was conducted in 2008, only 31% felt they regularly influenced those decisions." 

That's some big percentages and big potential spending. As a lady, what's cool to see is women helping each other out; "According to the survey, a third of women (33%) have recommended a product or service in the past six months. Only 19% said they recommended someone not buy specific product or service."

For those digitally involved, it won't surprise you that social media is really driving connectivity and decision making. "In the past year, the number of brands a woman follows on Facebook has increased 12%. (And 65% of women are a friend or fan of a company, compared with 52% of men.) At the same time, 73% of women use Facebook, compared with 65% in 2010."

Ladies, can you relate?

forget the 'lipstick theory'. it's all about the 'high heel' economic theory.

Last year we heard a lot about the 'lipstick theory', and how lipstick can be used as an economic indicator.

Now,  IBM Global Business Services argues that, "historically in economic downturns heels have tended to go up and stay up...as consumers look to compensate for dismal times with more flamboyant fashions."

Based on their social buzz study, IBM found that "mentions of heels finds they tend to be largely predictive of trends."

How so, you ask?

"Ominously, the average height of heels mentioned in social media soared from 3 inches in the first half of 2008 to 6 inches in the second half, just as the U.S. financial bubble burst and women's heels were ready to head toward their current heights. Heel buzz most recently peaked in the first half of 2009 at 7 inches, bounced around at 4 to 5 inches through early 2010 and plunged to 2 inches in the most recent IBM analysis from early this year.

IBM's cross analysis of heel-height buzz and macroeconomic data suggest a strong inverse correlation between heel-height buzz and economic growth."

Pretty cool, right?

just how much do the ladies 'Like' CPG?

According to Vitrue, based on an analysis of 40 CPG brand pages on Facebook, "women account for 65% of CPG Likes, while they make up 55% of the U.S. Facebook population overall and account for 57% of all Likes. This lends support to the notion that women are more apt to Like a CPG brand than men."

Impressive! But why is that?

According to Fred Stuk, Vitrue’s analytics manager, “it is very interesting to note that older women make up a large percent of Likes for CPG brands than for average pages analyzed. My assumption is that older women tend to be the decision makers for CPG products in their family.” 

earth-shattering findings: women are master social media communicators

Harris Interactive did a study looking at how people use social media as a communication tool. What did they find?

"Women now dominate men in their use of social media as a communication tool."

BOOM!

"Among online adults, 68% of women now communicate via social media, compared to 54% of men in the United States. By Harris Interactive's estimation, that translates to approximately 75 million women who communicate with friends using social networks versus 57 million men."

So, basically, us women are killing it as master communicators. 

taking the tailgate to a new level (and location).

The NFL is looking to spread the notion of tailgating, taking it into the home...

"With a newly launched site, Party Collection and expanded women's fashion line, the NFL is hoping to make 'homegating' as popular as tailgating and team-name purses as widespread as jerseys."

Why homegating? 79 million female fans make up 44% of the NFL's fan base, and the NFL believes there's plenty of opportunity to engage these ladies, while helping them turn their home into "NFL headquarters."

According to Johanna Paretzky, licensing manager for the NFL who directs the homegating initiative, "women who watch football 'are sometimes more passionate about the food, family and planning' aspect of the game and so the league has partnered with licensees to create a collection of party products for these 'homegating' events."

What do you think? Is this something of interest to you?

does your gender or age impact whether or not you 'Like' an ad?

According to SocialCode, yes!

Based on their research, "older consumers are more likely to click on a Facebook ad, while younger consumers, who are more comfortable with interacting with brands on Facebook, are more likely to click 'like'."

Also, "women are more likely to click on an ad on Facebook, though both men and women are about equally likely to then click 'like' once they’ve done so, the study found. The average clickthrough rate for women of all ages was 0.029%, compared to 0.026% for men of all ages. The 'like' rate among those who clicked an ad was 39% for women and 38% for men."

ladies, is your anxiety getting the best of you?

According to Boston Consulting Group, "women are more worried about jobs and the economy than at the height of the recession."

In fact, these anxiety levels are record breaking. According to Michael J. Silverstein, senior partner at The Boston Consulting Group and coauthor of 'Women Want More,' "the anxiety among women is unprecedented. Women are upset about a lot of things, including the way the government works and all the failed programs. Unemployment is a bigger problem among men, who have lost about 85% of the jobs, but if women are married, it makes them worried about the family's finances. And if they're single, it means unemployed men are ineligible. They have a lot of anxiety and resentment and they really feel like no one is listening."

does stress lead to feeling more powerful?

I wish!

According to Nielson, "female shoppers are feeling more stressed, more empowered, and more optimistic about what life will be like for their daughters.

The survey looked at women in 21 countries and found that almost 80% of those respondents in developed countries say that the role of women will change, and 90% say it will be for the better. Women in emerging markets are more likely to believe their daughters will find better opportunities than they did.

While all women feel the stress of multiple roles, the study reports that tension is highest in emerging economies, where women have less discretionary income. Women in India (87%), Mexico (74%) and Russia (69%) reported the most stress among developing countries; in developed economies, women in Spain (66%), France (65%) and allegedly laid-back Italy (64%) reported the highest levels of stress."

What does this mean for you?

"That creates more opportunities for marketers to reach women with promises of stress-reducing convenience, the study concluded, with women in most markets saying they like TV best for getting to know new products: 'In 10 of 10 emerging markets and in 7 of 11 developed countries analyzed, television outranked 14 other sources of information,' the report says. Word of mouth came in second. And in 20 out of 21 countries, quality -- not price -- was named as the main driver of brand loyalty."