West London Girl

WLG on smart design

June
25

Women have a big influence on big purchases – even when they’re made with someone else’s money

‘The Apple iOS 9 upgrade improves battery life by one hour; TESLA’s latest software upgrade improves its 0-60mph by 0.5 second; software is improving the world,’ CMO and business writer Vala Afshar tweeted.
‘It’s interesting that TESLA is targeting women,’ my soon-to-be (female) boss noted.
‘I think that’s because generally women care more about the environment,’ I said. ‘And perhaps women have a big influence on big purchases – even when they’re made with someone else’s money.

I was thinking of two exes who bought cars that I chose. ‘I can’t drive a convertible in Dublin,’ Trustafarian once exclaimed. I understood his reasoning when a football fan threw an empty Coca-Cola can into the back of his BMW as we left Croke Park Stadium. His next car, a Porsche 911, was also my choice. During a stand-up evening, a comedian asked the audience what their favourite gear change was. ‘Fifth to sixth,’ Trustifarian shouted. It was replaced with a Chelsea tractor a year after we broke up – much more suitable for a guy who likes to play golf.

I have male friends who like tech but two women – one of my future bosses and a dear friend – are my biggest influences. From discussing whether we should use Nouncy to improve our social media reach (only if we have enough people willing to be our brand ambassadors) and if we should implement paper.li to automatically collect, publish and share content on our website to using InDesign for presentations, buffer for scheduling tweets, toggl.com to track work and Google Drive to store and share files in the cloud: software is improving the way we work.

This summer TESLA launches a mobile pop-up shop. Perhaps their focus on women is simply a sign of the times: most women are as interested in tech and smart design as most men. ‘Design is people,’ the sociologist Jane Jacobs said.

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