The compassion that Eva shows to her patients makes her a devoted researcher. Her research makes her a doctor who can say to patients: "I'm working on a cure."

Take a look here for my profile of Feldman and her research.

So today, I'm embarking on another journey--another labor of love and inspiration. A new book with the working title "The Power of Women." This time we are going global with the idea that the growing economic power of women will change our world.

Check out this article on Harvard Business Review--women control $20 trillion in spending worldwide!

But I need an event, a story, a person, an idea to inspire me. So I'm looking forward to being inspired by two days at the Marketing to Women conference next week at Chicago's Cultural Center. I will be live blogging throughout the conference so catch up with my thoughts on the speakers, ideas, and presentations.

You can also catch me on Twitter. Just click on the feed on this page. You can also search for #m2w to see what all of us are tweeting about.

I also will moderate a panel of top marketers from brands such as Frito-Lay, Shutterfly, and Office Max on the final day, April 30, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. I hope you'll join us as we talk about the freshest ideas in reaching the women's market

Palin wasn't just playing politics, she was playing branding--or her conservative Republican handlers were.

Her speech was a classic branding play. Here is a brand--call her Brand Palin--who was tarnished right out of the gate. It was easy a week ago to dismiss Palin as unqualified. It was easy to be snarky about her hair. It was easy to criticize her mothering skills. She reminded me of a brand that many of us love to hate--Wal-Mart. We like to be snarky about that brand too: it's too big, it's too brash, it's bad for the environment despite changing its lightbulbs, it's sold guns.

But we forget that there are lots of Wal-Mart moms out there. If we diss and dismiss Palin, we diss those women. Today, Palin and McCain are headed to suburban counties outside of big metro centers--including one in my backyard, Macomb County just north of Detroit. They are reaching out to women who do see themselves in Palin as hard as that is to believe.

They like her brand even if they don't necessarily like her politics. A good number of these women likely have political leanings that would compel them to vote Democrat. But they don't see themselves in the Obama-Biden brand. That brand is too highbrow, too classy. Obama-Biden isn't even Target; it's more of Whole Foods no matter Biden's working class background.

Palin makes them feel proud of who they are. They may not be the salmon hunting, pistol packing, basketball shooting women--as Cindy McCain so proudly pointed out about Palin. But they do like that she tells jokes about being a hockey mom. They are hockey moms--particularly the women of Macomb county who probably can find Red Wings branded merchandise somewhere in their house. Hockey moms are a tougher breed than the old soccer moms. Palin makes them feel good about being one. I'm just waiting for hair salons to receive requests for the "Palin" up-do. That's not being snarky. These women want to identify with someone and Palin gives them a brand that they can wear comfortably--all the way up from her new suits to her hair.

And what of her family? She embraced them, showing off all of them to the world. Just like a good marketer facing crisis she turned her negatives into positives. She was proud of them, all of them. That was a star turn of branding. Of course, now she can't complain when someone wants to question issues surrounding her family. She used them to her advantage. She'll have to learn what marketers often have learned the hard way--when you embrace your faults others will nail you for them. It's not nice, it's not fair, but it's reality. It's politics.

They point out that Barack Obama is equally unqualified for the presidency as Palin. Others are parsing Obama's qualifications against Palin. I'll leave my comments on that for a later blog.

But what these conversations have made me ponder is this: will we choose our president the way we choose our brand of cars, stores we shop at, clothes we where? Are we Target or Wal-Mart? Are we Chevys or Toyotas? Will we choose our president because we see ourselves in them? Do we, in fact, need to see the candidate in the mirror?

But as the news sinks in of Palin's overnight rise to vice presidential nominee, I find myself insulted. Insulted and disrespected and angry. I think every women in America should feel the same way.

McCain's decision reminds me of marketers who think if they put a woman in their ads, paint their products a pretty color, and tell us they are thinking of us that we will buy whatever they are selling.

Many marketers have grown up since then. John McCain, the marketer and politician, still has a lot to learn. Women aren't a single, homogenous market who will be wowed by the simple choice of a woman being on the ticket.

But McCain seems to think that choosing a woman, any woman, is enough. He doesn't realize that choosing this woman--so inexperienced that it's frightening to think of her as the person a heartbeat away from the presidency--could be and should be viewed as condescending and patronizing. I hope he learns the same lesson as those marketers who wonder why we don't buy their products. It's because their ads don't work. We don't like the colors they pick. We won't stand for being patted on the head and told: "see I was thinking of you."

I would have applauded McCain for picking a woman--but out of all the women in the Republican Party--this was his best choice? I think all women should be asking themselves just what was McCain thinking, but most of all I think Republican women should be asking this:
Is this the best you could do, Mr. McCain?

What way? I often ask. The way, they say, in which education, money, and economic independence have made us what we are today. Too often as American women, we take for granted all those foundational elements--education, the right to vote, access to capital, the right to own a business--which have made us powerful consumers, powerful voting blocks, and powerful in the country's economy. It isn't until they listen to what is happening to women in other countries that they begin to see the power of what we have in American society today--and that power isn't just about what we can buy. Indeed it is far more about what we can produce from the education that we receive.

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:u2JK9K4i8HkJ:www.ksa-technopak.com/pdf/DTC%2520Presentation%2520-%25201%2520August%25202006.pdf+india+women+and+consumers&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=79&gl=us

The "butterflies" make up 50 percent of the women in the urban affluent class. As the nickname implies these women are all about the looks. They are moving rapidly to luxury goods, especially high-tech products like cellphones and MP3 players. But the second largest group--"old luxury"--make up 32 percent and are not as much about the "bling." These women have grown up with luxury, as the report notes, and may tend toward more traditional luxury goods.

Notably, the third group is called "Mrs. Rationality," a nickname that reflects a more logical, less indulgent buying group. It would be easy to assume that affluent urban women would act and buy alike. But the differences in these three groups show how fast-paced change can shape and mold consumers in unusual ways.

Even when it comes to big purchases such as cars or luxury items, a significant minority of Chinese women--23 percent--indicated that they could make those purchases on their own. This is a shift from conventional wisdom as Ernst & Young's report succinctly points out: "...general assumptions were that men being the sole or main breadwinner would also therefore act as the main decision maker when it comes to financial planning on spending."

Some of the eBrandmarketing.com blogs will appear in this forum over the next few months, but I am working toward creating two separate blogs...but with the same end goal in mind.

I want to start a conversation about the global power of the purse. What issues are you facing as marketers in the global market? Do you recognize women as an important part of your marketing mix when you head overseas? Do you have success stories of reaching women around the world? What obstacles have you found? What would you like to know more about in terms of research and case studies?

As we head into the Marketing to Women Conference May 8-9, 2008 in Chicago, I would like to get the conversation started about the importance of the women's market globally and the economic power of women around the world.

Here is a link to a blog on "womenomics" and pdf of the study: http://psdblog.worldbank.org/psdblog/2006/04/womenomics.html.

What intrigued me about these two ideas--women and the Internet--as Whitman spoke was that The Economist may have missed a larger point. The economic equation may not be that women are more important than the Internet, China, or India in terms of economic growth, but that women have been a primary reason for why the Internet, China, and India have become so important to our global economic growth.