June, 2005
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Women are generally acknowledged to be better communicators than menand therefore it stands to reason that
they are more vigorous users of mobile telephony for social purposes. So why is it that most people in the industry
bemoan the lack of content developed for a segment that accounts for 50 percent of subscribers?
Unsurprisingly, a failure by men to understand what a girl wants appears to be a root cause: “Everyone agrees there is consumer demand for female-oriented mobile content, but deployment has been a slow process,” explains Sabine Allaeys, creative director at Belgium-based Flow, which is responsible for the MiniFizz range of games. “Content teams at the operators tend to be male dominated, so they are not sure what products work for a female audience.” That is not to say Flow hasn’t been able to make headway. The company has direct relationships to feed its games into all major operators in its domestic market, in addition to distribution in the UK with Orange (an O2 launch is in the pipeline), Turkcell in Turkey and a clutch of carriers in Norway, Russia, Singapore and Australia. Furthermore, the company is working exclusively with US-based wireless entertainment publisher Dwango on a Minifizz mobile channel for the North American market and is in discussions with a Japan-based online and mobile community specialist for marketing and distribution in the Far East. |
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But what kind of content should
operators offer their female subscribers?
Though the Minifizz and Crazyfunbabe
product line-ups differ considerably,
there are common denominators used by
both companies: namely that the
content should be ‘sexy, sassy, intelligent
and fashionable’.
Those words are enough to strike fear into the hearts of most middle-aged male mobile executives. But the good news is that these characteristics differ little between international markets. “Female mobile users in North America and the EU are quite similar,” says Crazyfunbabe design consultant Rebecca Parkinson, who also runs focus groups for the company. “Above all, girls want to personalise their phones, so products such as e-cards and screensavers have universal appeal. General trends don’t change much – magazines cover the same subjects regardless of whether they are published in London, New York or Paris.” |
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Allaeys says it is crucial to avoid
stereotypical content, however: “For the
Minifizz games we designed characters
that weren’t straight out of some fantasy
world but were instead closer to
everyday life. Young boys have a huge
selection of role models, whereas girls
are often limited to princesses and
Barbie dolls. What the mobile market
needs are foxy, intelligent and positive
role models for girls. We’ve created a
universe with brains.”
Portugal’s beActive, meanwhile, has enjoyed success with Sophia’s Diary, a cross-platform soap opera targeted at a female audience. The ‘interactive story’ is presented to the viewer via TV, the Internet, radio, printed media and mobile. The format, which was launched in Portugal in 2003 and has some 11,000 registered mobile users, was made available internationally for the first time during April. Though 80 per cent of the Sophia’s Diary audience are females aged 11-18 years, beActive general manager Nuno Bernado argues that operators aren’t really looking for content that’s specific to either girls or boys: “At the moment operators are more interested in mass market multimedia products that target the smartphone owner niche. We expect they will begin targeting a specific audiences such as females more fully once high-end handsets are more ubiquitous.” |