The word of the day is CHO, as in Chief Household Officer, a term coined three years ago by an ill-fated magazine for women who left their careers to be stay-at-home moms, Total 180! Now the term has been claimed by a different brand of exclamation point, Yahoo!, who packed a conference room at the Harbour Castle Westin to explain the power of the target demographic group known as CHO.
 
Yahoo! shares plunged on Monday after the rejection of Microsoft’s takeover bid, meaning it was back to business for the company: Clicking With Jane, a half-day of insights billed as explaining the CHO acronym to potential advertisers. “Does your brand target a powerful person who is moving so fast, she’s almost a blur?” asked the invitation. “Jane is 34 and she’s a mover-and-shaker at work. At home, think of her as the Chief Household Officer. This also makes her Manager of Nutrition, Family Trip Planning Counsel, and Director of Hockey Equipment Delivery. And that’s just last weekend.” But how many Janes were born by 1974?

While the name itself dropped below Raquel, Tabitha, Priscilla, LaToya and Jenifer (with one “n”) — based on American statistics, anyhow — the Jane stereotype remains sustained by the big-box portal model brandished by Yahoo!

The general manager of Yahoo! Lifestyle appeared by webcam to explain as much. Amy Iorio had all the data that, for the modern-day child-raiser, “me time” is now down to minutes rather than hours. The web has come to the rescue, particularly when there’s no real roadmap for life, as she explains: “There isn’t that sense of going through life with the people you went to high school with.”

And the hacks that are handsomely paid to extol the virtues of every get-rich-quick Web 2.0 scheme can gush about how being able to upload your very own recipes to a community site is the quintessence of social networking, especially if a passion for specific brand names is somehow embedded in that connection.

But being privy to this meta-conversation from the inside out only fosters a desire to protect future generations from this squawk. Children are probably better off raised among the Amish, with a supply of Y2K preparedness kits. Maybe the new parenting model should be Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast.

That wouldn’t quench the cravings of those who came of age in the last millennium, however. And the mantra according to an internet research company like comScore isn’t really about meaning. Rather, their vice-president Bryan Segal has stats on how the use of any types of online video is soaring in Canada.

Segal also knows all about the “pre-CHOs”, women aged 25-to-34. “They’re in the accumulation stage,” he says. “And they’re very, very into online gambling.”

The next speaker has a weighty title — Brian Zeug is Category Development Officer for Consumer Packaged Goods, based at the New York office of Yahoo!

Right off the bat, he’s not buying the CHO schtick: “I’d rather call them ‘moms’.”

And, far as he can tell, this new recession isn’t going to be much fun for anyone.

When a Chief Marketing Officer often has a shorter run at any given company than a running back has with any given NFL team, no one deserves to be too arrogant, says Zeug. And, on top of that, there’s all the user-generated content that will never make money on its own, but will serve to shrink corporate returns.

Television is still king in his mom media index — earning 49 per cent of attention, compared to 20 for internet, 19 for the radio, and a lowly 4 per cent for print. (Which should explain last year's demise of the pre-CHO magazine, Jane.)

So, where’s it all headed far as Zeug is concerned? “More emotional keywords.”

His previous job was marketing M&Ms: “People would assume I worked in the chocolate business. I was actually in the fun business — and it was a colourful fun business. Describing it that way opens up the world in which you can compete.”

For the uninitiated, this explains why the fate of Yahoo! — a name that’s inspired overall indifference amongst the media savvy since the first dot-com crash — has become a conversation topic again. Like rejected suitor Microsoft, it represents stability, right? Jane, the hypothetical 34-year-old CHO, yearns for that balance.

Indeed, the Yahoo! sales exec shows a slide of the Taj Mahal, as evidence that Yahoo!’s 137 million monthly uniques trump the best brand’s site, 100 times over.

Case studies flashed by Zeug include one he’s especially proud of: Rehabilitating the image of Hellman’s mayonnaise as “Real Food,” rigging Yahoo! search to accommodate the search term, and promoting its application on each jar’s cap.

Those women who resisted the temptation to run to the supermarket and slather themselves in the creamy white stuff stuck around to hear another man’s opinion.

Nintendo of Canada’s general manager Ron Bertram, who flew in from Vancouver, confessed to knowing nothing specific about the internet, or women.

What he did illustrate is how Nintendo expanded its market by courting the “alpha-moms” — he didn’t fall for CHO, either — as part of an overall broadening.

Videogames were seen as inaccessible, intimidating, violent, antisocial and a big time suck according to that demographic — the one that Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata was determined to court with his new devices, even if business was good.

“How can you say we’re successful when 70 per cent of people dismiss us out of hand,” Bertram recalls Iwata saying. “He said it through a translator — but he did say it.” And, from there, the Nintendo DS and Wii console emerged during 2006. Domestically, their outreach includes a CHO-friendly website: Get Up and Play. 

And the remaining 42 per cent that haven’t been seduced by the technology are expected to be enraptured when the Wii Fit software hits the market on May 21. This virtual version of zen transcendence allows anyone to star in their own aerobics video, gyrate in an invisible Hula Hoop and enough sales pitch already.

Clicking With Jane didn’t cost a cent, however, unlike the next such half-day event slated for next week: the Interactive Media Conference whose keynote speaker, Wired editor Chris Anderson, will speak on the topic ahead of his upcoming book on “Why Free is the Best Online Policy.” Registration fee: $790.

Previously on the Scroll: Millennial malaise

Send news, tips, links about arts, culture, media to scroll@eyeweekly.com.
 

Email us at: LETTERS@EYEWEEKLY.COM or send your questions to EYEWEEKLY.COM
625 Church St, 6th Floor, Toronto M4Y 2G1