“The estimated 102 million women online are clearly underserved in the lifestyle arena,” said Martha Stewart president Susan Lyne in a statement. “We are ideally positioned to serve as the ultimate lifestyle destination on the Internet.”

The new site features recipes from 15 years of Martha Stewart publications, more than 700 cooking and how-to clips from the Martha Stewart Show, Everyday Food TV, and Martha Stewart Living Radio. More community features like discussion forums, plus web-only video clips, will debut in the fall.

Hoping to reach the 18-49 year old female demographic, Martha Stewart has signed several launch advertisers including Dove, 3M, Allstate, GE, and HP. MSLO is marketing the site through SEM as well as TV and print. The company is also holding a sweepstakes contest and interactive game to get more users involved with the site’s community.

According to the APA, sexualization occurs when a person’s value comes only from their sexual appeal, behavior, or appearance. The report combines psychological research, theory and clinical examples. The organization also examines advertising campaigns and merchandising that targets young girls, showing that such objectification can lead to social and cognitive impairment.

“We have ample evidence to conclude that sexualization has negative effects in a variety of domains, including cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, and healthy sexual development,” said Eileen L. Zurbriggen, PhD, the chair of the APA’s special task force in a statement.

According to the APA’s research, this kind of sexualization can lead to emotional and self-image problems among young girls, mental and physical problems such as eating disorders and depression, and a reduced ability to develop a healthy sexuality.

The report points out the prevalence of sexual imagery in every form of media from music to video games, and says that the proliferation of those types of images is increasing, most likely due to the growing reach of new media sources like the Internet.

“As a society, we need to replace all of these sexualized images with ones showing girls in positive settings—ones that show the uniqueness and competence of girls,” added Dr. Zurbriggen.

The APA also finds that women, more often than men, are objectified and display an unrealistic standard of sexuality and physical beauty.

The APA formed a special Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls after hearing concerns from child advocacy groups, parents and journalists to address this particular issue.

Perhaps one of the most prominent female-focused discussions was a workshop offered on both days of the conference sponsored by BabyCenter. The workshop, entitled “What Was Old is New Again: A 10 year Retrospective Snapshot of Women Online from User Group to Online Juggernaut,” was led by Jasmine Kim, Chief Marketing Officer for BabyCenter, and Jessica Lilie, Director of Market Research for the company. Both women have been on the tech side of marketing for around ten years and were essentially female pioneers in the early days of Silicon Valley, leading them to categorize themselves as “early adapters.”

At BabyCenter, they routinely examine new and efficient ways to market to women, but for Mixx, it seemed appropriate to take a look back. Days prior to the BabyCenter workshop, Kim explained to ADOTAS that even though the Internet has been around for a while, many of the titans like eBay and Yahoo are celebrating their tenth year, a significant milestone.

In the early days of online marketing, people never really discussed how to actually market or talk to consumers. There was the assumption that if a product was built, people would come. While Kim feels a portion of that mentality remains, today the industry has become less product-oriented and more service-oriented. Her discussion with Lilie at Mixx will examine exactly how improvements in marketing to women have come about and what remains to be fixed.

Of particular interest in their dialogue is what makes women different as a target audience, and just how powerful of a demographic they really are. Both Ms. Lilie and Ms. Kim address the persistent stereotype of women being “technophobes” or “late adapters.”

Technical products and internet services have classically been geared towards the 18-35 year old male demographic based on the notion that women are wary of such technology. “We actually know that that [stereotype] is not the case because women have a different threshold or requirement of what makes them want to use the product or service. [Their concern is] that it’s user friendly to them in a way that speaks to them,” Ms. Kim says. To support this theory, the duo will be discussing case studies that showcase how some companies have successfully communicated with women, which Kim describes as a “juggernaut, critical segment of the marketplace.”

To depict just how powerful women can be as technological consumers, Ms. Kim uses the examples of Webvan, one of the first online grocery delivery services, and Purple Tie, an online dry cleaning service. Both services gave delivery and pickup times that spanned several hours, in the style typical of, say, the cable company. For busy working women and/or moms, there was no clear advantage to using those services. “It was basically offline service online without any clear benefits, efficiency or speed or matriculation,” Kim says. Considering that ninety-five percent of grocery purchasers are women, it’s no surprise that Webvan went out of business while Purple Tie now offers a 60-minute window.

For those attending the Mixx Expo, the “Deep Dive Sessions” offer several discussions regarding the mobile front. There are perhaps few speakers better acquainted with the world of wireless than Laura Marriott, Executive Director of the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), who will be contributing to the discussion of “Research Perspectives on Mobile Marketing Opportunities.” ADOTAS recently had a brief chat with Laura to get the inside scoop about her background, her thoughts on mobile, and what she has in store for her Mixx session. Check her speech out yourself on September 25 at 4:45 pm.

Hi Laura. So just to get started, what is your background prior to the MMA, and what brought you to the association?

OK, so I am a Canadian, and I have been involved in high-tech for the last sixteen years of my career. About nine years ago when I was in Calgary, I got involved in telecom and in wireless, and just absolutely loved it. I have been at wireless startups in Canada, California, and Texas, and then here in Colorado in marketing, business development, and product roles.

At my last job, I was running the messaging business for Europe and Asia for a company called Intrado and I ended up becoming a member of the board for the MMA. So I actually sat on the board of directors. At that time, and that was only January of last year, January of ’05, the MMA was only twenty-eight members. In July, I talked to the Chairman and the Vice Chairman and we decided that I would take on the role of Executive Director and I started at the MMA in July of last year.

So the MMA is your primary focus right now?

Yes, I am the first full-time staff person of the MMA and we’ve grown the association from one full-time staff person, we now have four with a bunch of contractors. We have close to four hundred members worldwide, so up from twenty-eight last January, and we’re truly a global association today. So the number of initiatives and the number of things we’ve done have just greatly increased.

Tell me a little bit about your day-to-day responsibilities within the MMA as Executive Director.

If you think about our mission statement, one of our main initiatives is to educate and evangelize on using the mobile channel. So what does that mean? That means talking to agencies, so both traditional, digital, and mobile agencies about what the mobile channel can do for them. It’s educating brands on how to get involved.

And then it’s really talking to all members of the ecosystem about the power of the channel. You know, who are the partners they should select to get into mobile. It’s working with the committees which are made up of a number of volunteers to develop the guidelines and best practices around our space. So what are the rules that a brand or agency should follow in engaging the mobile channel. And then I do a lot of speaking. We actually have a big webinar today. So yeah, a lot of member interaction and communication as well.

Since the mobile industry is such a hotspot at the moment, are there certain trends that you are noticing a lot recently? Is there a particular direction that you foresee mobile heading towards?

I would say that a lot of emphasis of late has been put around mobile advertising as one of many areas, but we’re seeing uplift in text messaging campaigns, short code campaigns. We’re seeing a lot of energy and enthusiasm around mobile video and television. We’re also starting to see a lot of focus placed on mobile commerce. So, that means loyalty programs and ticketing and couponing, which are all ways that a brand can further improve their engagement model with their consumer. It’s really that we’re seeing roads across the mobile channel on every front.

Somewhere in her busy day, you need to grab her attention to make her want to buy your product, and this is a huge deal because she is ultimately the decision maker when it comes to spending money. Check out the stats below:

1. The US has approximately 55 million working women between the ages of 25-54, even though they earn less than men, they make 80% of the buying decision in the household. They research more and are LESS LIKELY to be influenced by ads.
2. Women spent $7.6 billion on jeans in 2005, up 10% from last year
3. In the year 2000, 9.2% of households were run by single mothers. The estimate of single mothers in 2000 was 9.68 million.
4. I have seen reports that billions of dollars are spent on cosmetics each year
5. Women make up 51.6% of the online population, as of 2004

It’s time to reach back and remember our Marketing/Advertising 101 class…people are most likely to purchase a product from an ad that they can relate to.

Let’s take number 1 and number 2 of the stats above, if women are less likely to respond to ads, then why are there so many ads out there showing teeny boppers, who are a size 0 trying to sell jeans? For Pete’s sake, women in the age range of 30 or above do not want to relate to that and should not feel they have to, so make ads that relate to her. Show a woman with a few pounds on her, sending the kids off to play with friends, she escapes into her room, throws on a pair of jeans, sighs and stretches out on the couch and the ad ends in silence…Now THAT will capture your working audience.

Spin that into an online ad, we make Jeans for the working women or something like that, show the same lady stretched out on the couch with her eyes shut, people will get it. Make the online ad into an email campaign, shoot the email out saying, “Our jeans are just for you, and no your teenager can’t borrow them.” Then make sure the email campaign goes out and reaches their inbox either around lunch time, because they are probably sitting at their desk eating lunch, or late evening, when they have a small amount of quiet time after everyone is asleep.

Again use people and text that women can relate to, mix up the ads, believe it or not, just because someone is not blond and a stick doesn’t mean they are not beautiful, so let them know this by the ads.

I saw a famous footwear ad on TV Sunday night during Grey’s Anatomy and loved it! I could relate to the commercial, a group of women, all different backgrounds and looks, all very happy and dancing around because they love their shoes. I thought it was great and it caught my attention, why? Well, it came on during a program I am not ashamed to say I watch because of Patrick Dempsey or McDreamy as he is so appropriately named on the show. I love shoes, my friends and I are all different looking, so it was easy to relate This morning I remembered the commercial, went to the website and signed up to receive offers and promotions. VIOLA! How easy was that? I saw shoes online I really liked and will be going to buy something this weekend. Seriously let’s see what happened there:

1. I watch a TV show because the men on the show are hot. Yes men, wake up women do watch shows because the guys are hot.
2. A shoe commercial airs during that timeslot — good marketing, catch the user when they are captivated
3. I could relate to the commercial, it didn’t take a lot of imagination to picture my friends and I doing the same thing. Two more pluses for marketing, Famous Footwear gave me something I could relate to and it didn’t make me wish to be skinnier, prettier or anything else, all it did was make me grin.
4. The commercial stayed in my mind, and drove me to their website. Very good combination marketing, keeping the user intrigued.
5. The site featured some of the same ladies from the commercial, so I knew I was in the right place and right there on the page it says sign up for promos and offers. How easy is that? This showed the user what they want and women like deals, so they sign up in hopes of receiving some type of coupon before they hit the store this week.
6. All I had to give was my name, zip code and email. The site makes you feel safe, and not like you are giving away your life history.
7. And now, they have a customer, because I will be buying a pair of shoes or two this weekend and telling my friends about it.