Marketing to Women In The Bags?

This tale of two bags is about opportunities yet to be realized.  The first is an occasion looking for a great bag.  This Brandweek article documents the increase in brown bag lunches spurred by recent economic challenges and the CPG companies capitalizing on it.  Pair this growing trend with "green" grocery shopping habits that include selecting paper or bringing your own bag and add to it the fact that traditional brown bags themselves often don't stand up well in crowded office fridges (which tend to include one or two spilled mystery liquid incidents per day) and there's a great opportunity for a store-to-desk bag solution.  Companies could make it easy to bring your own lunch and tout their own sustainable policies with branded bags for new employees.  A little hot/cold innovation, easy cleanup and perhaps even some killer style...Tar-jay are you listening? 

The second tale relies on the idea that if you put something in a woman's bag, she will come to find it necessary, perhaps even essential.  Last week Nintendo announced a partnership with Bags to Riches, an online handbag rental site, where the new Nintendo DS will be inserted in some handbag rentals through the end of this year.  The idea is that status created by the bag and the fashionable items you carry in it will rub off on the new gadget, making the DS the new "it" accessory.  According to the Sept. 19 MediaPost article: 

Samuel Mangiere, chairman and co-founder of the online handbag rental site, calls the Nintendo DS this year's must-have fashion accessory that goes well with handbags. "Carrying the Nintendo DS in your purse makes a statement because I truly believe there's a link between the DS and any belt, sunglasses or pair of shoes," he says. "It tells people: 'I'm up-to-date. I like electronics. I probably have a BlackBerry or an Apple iPhone in my purse, too.'"

This approach, both targeted and grassroots, stands every chance of being successful - if the DS proves itself to be a useful item that the women take out of their purses so others can spot it, check it out (and I include entertainment in the useful category) and hopefully pop for one themselves.