I feel like I'm in an echo chamber (except for the valiant Phil who commented on my last two posts).

Radio Userland server or application has been acting up since before noon EST; we can post, but the posts aren't reflected on the Recently Updated list.  Nor are comments getting emailed to bloggers.

Here and I actually had two timely posts today, in time to improve my traffic.  Instead I've got only a third of my regular traffic.

And nobody from Userland has responded in any way, either to my email, to the Salon blog group emails, or by posting a status report at the Radio Userland forums.

Grrr...

 

  9:24:09 PM    comment []

 

This really torques me off; no company can remain competitive when it disparages its largest customer group and their collective desires.

 

This in NYT from Bob Lutz and Michael Ganal, after viewing the Volvo featuring design by women with women in mind:

 

“So when Volvo rolled into the Geneva Motor Show this week with a car designed by women, for women, the reaction among the mostly male crowd can best be described as a collective grinding of the gears.

They gaped at the car's gull-wing doors, designed to make it easier for women to enter and exit. They clucked at the rear seats, which flip up like theater seats to store shopping bags. They lampooned a rubber bumper that swathes the car, protecting it from parking-lot dings and scratches.

"It's not even a theory, it's nonsense," said Michael Ganal, the head of sales and marketing for BMW.

Robert A. Lutz, the vice chairman of General Motors, said the whole idea was sexist. "Most women would say: 'I send my husband out to do the shopping. Let him have the car with the rubber bumpers.' "”

Idiots.  Both of them.

 

First, women are responsible for buying decisions on more than half of the cars sold.  Period.  Don’t tell us that we don’t know what we want.  We only buy the cars that are available because that’s all that are available.  Give us a product we really want and you might actually have happy, satisfied, return customers year to year rather than customers who are making do with your stupid products – people who might actually buy an American-designed, American-made or German-designed, German-made product over an Asian product.

 

Secondly, don’t assume you have the right or the best products because you – men, in a male-dominated industry -- make them.  Your designers and engineers are predominately male – in nearly every industry, for nearly every product.  Just look at the numbers of women graduating from technology programs or entering careers in technology; it’s right there, in black-and-white, the truth that most products are created from a male state of consciousness.  I wonder every time I have an inadequate product or experience a product failure whether there weren’t enough women on the design and engineering team (Microsoft’s blue screen of death being a frequent reminder; the proximity of my car’s airbag to my chest yet another reminder).  As Albert Einstein said, A problem cannot be solved from the same state of consciousness that created it...

 

Thirdly, I’ve been hit three times in one year by MEN.  Some hot-dogging twerp on a motorcycle sideswiped me last May, an over-caffeinated coffee shop patron hit my bumper in January and a guy in a hurry home after work nudged me (nearly into on-coming traffic!) from behind last week.  My husband who’s driving on the expressway doesn’t need the rubber bumpers; I do, to protect me from MEN while driving in town!  It might well be sexist to insist on bumpers, and it may not be the bias that Lutz immediately thinks of – but damn it, give me the bumpers!

 

One of my favorite cars was a Honda CR-X.  It had a lovely, comfortable feel on the road, steering that was easy yet highly responsive, tight cornering, great pickup, incredible gas mileage, and a HUGE cargo space that I didn’t have to reach over or up to in order to load groceries, golf clubs, what have you.  It ran like a champ, had great traction in even the worst weather, and was agile, light, small enough that even I could dig it out of a snow bank by myself.  It even had ample head and leg room for my then-boyfriend (now my 6’-3” hubby) and yet was comfortable for a near-dwarf like me (5’-2” on a good day).

 

Yeah.  Tell me what GM or BMW product would meet that same description.

 

And tell me how many men would have a problem with a vehicle which fit that same description.

 

As Volvo’s project manager, Camilla Pamertz said,

 

"Men and women really want the same things in cars…But women want more. There's no car out there right now that fulfills all their criteria."

 

Exactly.

 

I reserve my strongest raspberry for this bit:

 

“…Mr. Ganal said: "We never approach a car by asking, is the car more used by males or females? We ask, what is the purpose of the car?"

 

Hello???  Apparently Mr. Ganal (and Mr. Lutz) needs to read The Cluetrain Manifesto.  A market is a dialogue with the customer – not the product.  Who are your customers?  What are they saying?  When companies look at the product and not the customers, they’ve lost focus and taken their eyes off the ball.

 

It’s no wonder at all that I’ve owned three Hondas and a Nissan; there’s simply nobody listening to me or women in general at GM or BMW.

 

  3:09:46 PM    comment []

 

I love this man, but he’s a bit slow at times.  Maybe it’s just the stress level of his job that keeps him from being plugged in, real-time.

 

Hubby asked me yesterday as I was reading and typing up another post, seventeen months after I first started my blog and the associated daily ritual of writing and posting:

 

Hey, have you ever thought about writing a book?

 

Yes, I’ve thought about it, more than a few times.  I think I already have written one.  It’s just not organized in a traditional book format.

 

But try explaining that one to dear hubby.

 

  2:06:01 PM    comment []