I’m talking about the invisible mental burden, the pressure that still exists to feel and appear in control of everything in the domestic domain, that keeps me up organizing and sprucing until 11pm the night before my in-laws come to town, even though my husband declared the house clean and ready at 7pm.  (Okay, so maybe I am kind of talking about those vexing bathtub stains – but not really.)  It’s the same invisible burden that splits me between pride and embarrassment when I tell someone that my husband is the chef in the family.  And it’s the same mental burden that intensified when I first became pregnant, for instance, turning something as simple as my lunch choice into a divergent life path for my child to be. Pick organic soup from Whole Foods and I was setting my child up to be intelligent, well rounded, and graduate-school bound.  Pick the fried sandwich from Chick-fil-a I was really craving, and I was dooming my child to early-childhood obesity and repeating second and third grade.

76% of moms in a Babycenter poll said they felt pressure to be the “perfect” mother.  Not good, not great, but perfect.  Why is this pressure so intense for moms?  Is it regulation-issued at birth, or is it driven by outdated societal expectations that have yet to catch up with the 50-hour workweek realities of many moms?  Have we taken on more without mentally taking anything off of our collective plates?

Whatever the cause, the effects of needing to feel in total control of the domestic domain lead to less satisfaction and joy in moms’ life, and more stress.  In fact, a UT Austin study found that in households where fathers help out equally or more with domestic duties, moms feel an increased sense of satisfaction in the marriage, but a decreased sense of self-esteem.  So, right or wrong, and whether she chooses to act on it or not, mom still derives a large part of her sense of self from how she contributes at home.  This is not to say that moms don’t want dads to help out more in the household, just that there are strange and complex mental side effects associated with dad’s help.

Additionally, a recent Canadian study found that new moms who feel the need to be perfect are more likely to suffer from postpartum depression.  And moms who dealt with those feelings by trying to appear that they didn’t have a problem had the strongest link to postpartum depression.

The lesson for moms and marketers is to work together to relieve the invisible burden.  We’re exploring moms’ pressures through our Mom Tugs framework, so that we can help brands better understand the pulls and pressures moms feel in their category and help them resolve the tension (and make the sale).  And moms are already banding together on blogs, message boards and over dinner and drinks to share and laugh about their unreasonable self-expectations, slowly releasing the perfection pressure valve created modern society.  Is your brand a part of the laughter and release, or a still part of the problem?

In February, a study was fielded to 475 respondents with children under the age of 19 living at home. Among the many subjects on which this study probed was the behavior modifications moms have experienced re: product and retail brands.

Not surprisingly, some key measures of saving behavior actually increased during the period. For example, in the June ’09 study 66% of moms reported being more cognizant of in-store offers. In our most recent study that number has increased to 72%. Similarly, 58% of moms reported using more coupons in June. By February, that figure had increased to 63%. These numbers are hardly shocking. Undoubtedly, given the ebb and flow of the economy, some households that had not previously been impacted have experienced a personal downturn in the last eight months.

Conversely, many families who had felt the economic sting prior to last June have seen their personal situations improve in the interim. Lost jobs have been replaced; salary cuts have been restored, etc. Even more likely, people expecting the worst back in the summer of 2009 never realized it. How have these moms’ behaviors changed?

As a result of these economic realities, we anticipated that a large portion of our sample would have migrated back to their previously established brand relationships. But, while some brand migration is evident, it is nowhere near the levels anticipated.

On the product side, 65% of the respondents reported making substantive changes in the brands they’ve purchased. Of that number, only 9% said that they have returned to many or all of their previously favored brands. Of special interest are the influences on the decision to revert to prior brand behaviors.

In some instances (33%), comfort level with an old brand was identified as a major influence on moms reestablishing their relationship. Other brands benefitted from a lack of performance on the part of the competition. 37% of respondents identified dissatisfaction with their alternative selections as a primary driver of their return to prior purchase patterns. Of equal importance, however, were the steps their original brands took to woo mom back. 34% cited lower pricing and 31% reported more aggressive promotions as major influences on their decision to return to their historic brand relationships.

Retailer loyalties, while significantly impacted by the economy, have not experienced the same degree of migration as product brands have. 54% of moms reported substantial outlet switching. Of these only 8% have returned to most or all of their previously favored retailers.

The reasons for switching back mirror the rationale provided for returning to historic brand behaviors. Comfort with their prior stores was noted as a primary influence by 36% of the moms who’ve reverted to at least some of their old outlets. 30% cited dissatisfaction with the product assortment offered by their alternative choice. And, as was the case with product brands, many retailers had to win customers back with better deals. 36% cited lower prices and 35% noted more aggressive promotions as primary motivators in switching back to their old retail relationships.

The economy, while more stable than it was last summer, remains in flux. As a result, there are continuing pressures on brands’ relationships with moms. The longer this situation continues, the greater the likelihood that the attitudinal and behavioral shifts we have seen will remain permanent. The result will be more cautious and demanding consumers, particularly among those responsible for family. Retailers will continue to go out of business and brands will disappear from the shelves. The winners will be those organizations that understand the true needs and wants of their audiences and can successfully strengthen their customer relationships at every touchpoint.

If you are interested in connecting with moms, email Nicole, our mom team lead.

Find out more about how we talk to mom»

 As a mother of two young kids, I am often seeking out information that is not only factual but practical.  I am searching for answers of how to handle a 6 year olds temper to what other moms used to clear a bad diaper rash. And yes, I can get all of this information from something that has 2 covers with perfect stitching, but why?  Why would I choose to read a dated reference book when I can talk to other moms with my same issues and read about how my fellow moms handle certain situations?

 Not only am I huge blog reader, I now have a blog of my own.  An outlet where I share my funny family stories with friends and families.  During my blog research, I have come across many successful mommy blogs that offer everything from family stories to product suggestions. 

One of these such mommy bloggers is at the top of the mommy blogging world. She has made her personal blog her main income for her family and has currently landed a spot on HDTV.  DOOCE.com is by far my favorite mommy blogger.  She is real.  She offers an honest look at married life with kids.  While she spends her days updating her blog, she is also supporting her site with banner ads which now support her family and has allowed her husband to stay home with her.

What a great idea and one I wish I had thought of!  To think that you can support your life with marketing through banner ads on a site that you update because you love to write about your life, family and what you are having for breakfast.  BRILLIANT.  And for those companies who advertise on a blog like this are not brave, but smart.  Those who follow blogs daily are exposed to targeted product placements without evening knowing it. 

In the words of Heather Armstrong herself (the Dooce!) “Here in this tiny space on the web is an example of just how awesome and life-altering the Internet can be.”

 Check her out.  I am sure once you read her blog once you will be hooked.

The reason for my supposition is the recent influx of TV shows featuring families like the critically acclaimed Modern Family as well as the all-too-real The Middle. They point to the fact that we want to see how the family is doing. Today’s families may not look like the Waltons, but like the Depression-era brood, these shows have their own unique blend of chaos, forgiveness and laughter.

Modern Family and The Middle, in particular, deal with issues so current and relevant that as a parent, I don’t feel crazy, I feel befriended. Not since the Bradys and the Partridges have I wanted a TV family to live next door. Even the newer dramas are revolving around family, case in point, Brothers and Sisters, The Good Wife and Parenthood that debuted this week.

The shows embrace their family-ness. The Modern Family website has a family scrapbook and a family tree. This week, the Hecks of The Middle went on a road trip to a spelling bee. Both show are affirming and uplifting, all while shrinking the jeans or thinking up punishment for shooting a sibling with an air-rifle pellet.

To quote The Middle’s mom Frankie Heck “People end up in places they don’t want to be because of two things, drugs or kids.” If you don’t have kids, this may seem like nothing. To those of us in the throes of it, it is our reality.

If you’d like to check out episodes, I recommend Modern Family episodes: Fears, Fifteen Percent and Fizbo. The Middle: The Bee, The Yelling or Valentine’s Day.

Both shows offer a great take on today’s moms and dads. Interested to see what Parenthood brings to the party.  Let me know what you think.

But as we begin a new decade, a new type of sponsorship has emerged. Gone is the the sponsorship of the event and in its place is the sponsorship of a target audience.

Proctor and Gamble supported the 2010 Winter Olympics with an emotionally riveting campaign called Thank You, Mom. 60-second advertisements focused on the support Olympian’s moms give to them throughout the years as they strive for athletic excellence. And each spot comes to a close with the P&G, Proud Sponsors of Moms message. 

After seeing the commerical for the first time, I had the same reaction as many mothers I polled, it sparked an emotion for moms who want the best for their kids and would do anything to support them. But after seeing the spots over the last two weeks, as an advertising professional, I found myself asking: do they really need to keep saying “proud sponsors of moms” at the end of every spot? The spots were emotional enough that if they just ended with a simple P&G product message, the audience could have made their own connection to the spot. It almost felt like I was seeing the strategy line being broadcast over and over: P&G products are purchased by moms and we wat to show our support of our key target audience.

As a mom, I also pondered, how does Dad feel right now. The Winter Olympics draws not only the female members of the household but the entire family. And with approximately 75% of moms in the workplace, the household responsibilities are falling more onto Dad. And I know the Dad in my household was annoyed that he wasn’t getting any love for supporting his son.

So I applaud P&G’s effort to create a commerical that wasn’t product focused and engaged the audience, but I wish we didn’t see their mom strategy over and over. Moms appreciate a brand that understands what it takes to be a mom, but they engage with brands because they organically fit into their lives. I’m not sure because P&G said they were a proud sponsor of mom, that mom returned the favor and claimed they were a proud sponsor of P&G products. And a mom marketers true sucess is measured by the mom advocates that willingly sponsor and support its products as that is the ultimate driver of sales.

What do you think, did P&G’s Thank You Mom campaign gain them more followers, or did it just make Mom feel good (and Dad feel left out)?

While it wasn’t much of a surprise to learn that 88% of the mothers surveyed had switched to less expensive brands in at least one of the seven product categories to save money, the broader extent to which mothers have been switching brands to save money may come as a surprise to some.  The data showed that nearly two-thirds (66%) had switched to less expensive brands in all seven product categories.

What was even more interesting is that, on average, 59% of mothers who’d switched brands to save money in a given product category indicated they’d be likely to stay with their newly adopted, less expensive brands.  Mothers were most likely to return to their former brands where food and drinks for the children were concerned (45% likelihood) while only 38% were likely to do so when purchasing clothes for themselves or paper products.

Given these findings, brands need to be on the alert.  The times are ripe with both challenges and opportunities.  The fact that 59% of mothers, on average, expressed intent to stay with their newly adopted brands represents a recent increase in opportunity for relatively lower-tiered, lower-priced brands.  However, these challenger brands will need to develop a strategy for “staying in the game” down the road and keeping these newer customers in the event they later become open to increasing their spend.  On the other hand, incumbent brands had best develop a strategy for maintaining market share and minimizing customer attrition.  Now, more than ever, brands need to be strategically planning for their future.

First, the classics

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant. Blue oceans represent untapped market space and the opportunity for highly profitable growth. The authors urge companies to create and capture new demand and to focus on the big picture, not the numbers.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t. In this book, James Collins uncovers the underlying variables that enable any type of organization to make the leap from good to great while other organizations remain only good. His findings are surprising.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. It’s almost ten years old, yet people still reference it. If you haven’t read it, here it is in three points: The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, and The Power of Context. Or maybe you could find someone’s well-worn copy and read it.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Many apparent mysteries of everyday life could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections, even when the connections aren’t obvious.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Drawing on psychosocial studies on memory, emotion, and motivation, this study is couched in terms of stickiness, the art of making ideas unforgettable. It is about storytelling—a how-to for crafting a compelling narrative.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. This has been called the definitive work on branding, distilling the complex principles and theories into 22 quick and easy-to-listen-to vignettes. Find out how to own a word in the mind of the consumer.

Some other worthy reads

Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity into a Powerful Business. Presented as some of the world’s most fascinating case studies, the Fallon founders tell stories about the hits and misses in their experience using creative leverage.

BrandSimple: How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed. Build your brand on a simple idea that can be adopted by an entire organization and executed brilliantly and consistently across all points of customer interaction.

Marketing’s 10 Deadly Sins (and How to Avoid Them). Marketing’s 10 Deadly Sins helps readers understand common mistakes made by those involved in the marketing process and presents proven methods to avoid them. (Just like the title says, huh?)

Emotionomics: Leveraging Emotions for Business Success. 80% of decisions are made emotionally. Then we find the rational reasons to defend those decisions. After reading this, you’ll never settle for “confidence” as the desired emotional response.

The Brand Gap. This book shows how to close the gap between strategy and creative. It includes topics like the five essential disciplines of brand-building, the three most powerful questions to ask about any brand, and (my favorite as an art director) how design determines a customer’s experience. Nice quick read.

Reaching moms and the luxury market

Don’t Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy. With women making 85% of consumer buying decisions and running 40% of all companies in the U.S., it makes sense that marketers would want to appeal to this huge audience. The authors believe that too many companies either don’t cater to women or repeatedly send misleading messages.

Mom 3.0: Marketing WITH Today’s Mothers by Leveraging New Media & Technology. Maria Bailey examines how today’s mothers are bridging new media and technology to create marketing channels for companies to leverage.

Trillion-Dollars Moms: Marketing to a New Generation of Mothers. The authors help marketers tap into the spending of moms with pr campaigns that resonate with mothers, advertising campaigns with relevant messaging, special events that appeal to the mom market, and web sites with time-saving features for busy moms.

The Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands. The Luxury Strategy sets out the counter-intuitive rules for successfully marketing luxury goods and services. It unveils how in any market, including B to B, a company can learn from luxury strategies to differentiate itself profitably.

Some new reading for new media

The Art of Digital Branding. This book is described as the definitive guide to building a web presence. Chapters cover everything from color schemes and menu formats—and the pivotal roles they play—to adding depth to the web experience with audio, video, and animation.

Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day. This guide is designed to teach you how to make social media an active part of your marketing plan by developing and pitching a social media campaign inside your company, building a map of your key conversation-generators, and getting to the consideration phase of the purchase funnel.

Unleashing the Ideavirus. Seth Godin describes ways to set any viable commercial concept loose among those who are most likely to catch it–and then stand aside as these recipients become infected and pass it on to others who might do the same. “Ignite consumer networks and then get out of the way and let them talk.”

Experiential Marketing: A Practical Guide to Interactive Brand Experiences. This book demonstrates how experiential marketing fits in with the current marketing climate and how to go about planning, activating, and evaluating it for best results.

The Social Media Bible. Get to know over 100 social media tools and applications in fifteen different categories with a quick rundown of the features and functions of the tools that should become part of your social media strategy. It also includes mini exercises and assessments to help you conduct a social media audit of your brand.

The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business. Whuffie is the author’s word for social capital in the Web 2.0 landscape. She includes many specific strategies and concepts from seeking out and incorporating feedback to treating your company’s message as a conversation.

As we have reported in the past, short-term economic influences are affecting moms’ behavior and their attitudes toward brands. A recent study of 1,638 moms on the opinions@trone panel was designed to confirm our prior learning and to gain incremental understanding of how these changes are being manifested.

The study confirmed that short-term economic issues are mom’s single greatest source of stress, surpassing even the anxieties associated with their hectic schedules and the pressure to get everything done. This is both a reasonable and understandable phenomena as 53% have experienced a decline in income of an immediate family member, resulting from either a layoff or a reduction in hours and/or wages.

Taking steps to cope.

The most common thing mothers are doing to deal with this financial pressure is making sure they aren’t “leaving money on the table.” Sixty-six percent report being much more cognizant of in-store offers and 58% are using more coupons. Beyond this they are displaying a surprising willingness to change brands.

Fifty-seven percent are frequently or very frequently shopping at less expensive stores while 54% are frequently or very frequently switching to less expensive brands in some categories.

The impact is being felt across the board.

Virtually every member of the family is experiencing this change to some degree. The same holds true for nearly all the product categories moms buy. The biggest change is occurring in packaged goods where more than two-thirds of moms have modified their behavior. In canned goods, for example, 14% report shopping at different stores for the same brands, 34% are buying less expensive brands at the same stores and 15% have changed both the stores they shop and the brands they buy.

Beyond consumables, moms are most likely to change the brands/outlets they shop for their children first, next themselves and finally dad and the family pet. Lest we think that moms have been driven to an as yet unseen degree of selfishness based on the economy, we need to bear in mind two things about purchases for children. First, their goods are short-lived and second, their needs are not easily deferred. Mom can delay purchasing that new outfit for herself, but if the children have outgrown their clothes, purchases must be made. And, where mom’s outfit might last years, the kids’ items might make it through a season.

Moms’ traditional unselfishness was demonstrated in another line of questioning. When asked about their willingness to change to less expensive sources for a gift for their child or clothing they’d wear to a special event, moms were 68% more likely to deny themselves.

Willingness to change has its limits.

While it’s not true for all, most moms have limits. There are some brands they just don’t want to give up—under any circumstances. So, as a part of the survey, we asked them on an unaided basis to name three brands that fell in that category. Considering the tens of thousands of brands that moms interact with, from Carter’s^® to Coach^®, Tampax^® to Tiffany^®, it is surprising that there is any consensus at all. But, there is. Of the 88% (12% are brand ambivalent) of the respondents who indicated one or more brands they would never want to give up, 20 brands were mentioned by greater that 1.5% of the sample. As the following brand preference cloud demonstrates, some were mentioned far more frequently than that. In fact, the leader (Kraft^®) was mentioned by a remarkable 12.8% of respondents.

There are two stories to this data.

This grouping tells two important stories for marketers. It identifies, on the one hand, how strong a brand relationship can be and on the other just how fragile. Given the billions of dollars spent by the tens of thousands of brands with which moms interact, why did these 20 rise to the fore? Clearly, recency is an issue, but that does not explain the presence of Sony^®, Levi’s^® or Fisher-Price^®. These brands share no common attribute or application. Some are mom’s brands, some are for the kids and some have application across the entire family. Some are consumables and some are durables. The only thing these brands have in common is the one thing that all marketers strive for: They have built a sustainable relationship with their customer.

In Wave One of a longitudinal study, Trone learned that, broadly speaking, today’s moms come in three varieties, each having their own unique challenges and issues. Representing about a third of the market apiece, they are “me first” moms, “kids first” moms and “info first” moms.

Me First	Kids First	Info First

Given the current state of the economy, moms responded to a battery of economic and product questions in Wave Two of the study which was fielded at the end of April, 2009. One of the questions asked was, “How important is it that the products you buy are made in the United States?” In response to this question, 52% of all moms indicated that it was very or extremely important that the products they buy be American-made. Interestingly, this finding was consistent across all three types of moms with just over half of the moms in each segment expressing strong loyalty to American-made products.

When asked how important it was that various types of products be made in the U.S.A., moms thought it was most important for children’s toys to be American-made by a wide margin. Cars were next on the list of importance, a sentiment likely influenced by the economic hardship currently engulfing the U.S. auto industry.

Another key finding was that over 75% of all moms indicated they’d be willing to pay a premium for American-made products. When asked if they’d be willing to put their money where their sentiments were, moms who expressed strong loyalty to products made in the U.S.A. were more willing than moms on the whole (36% vs. 29% respectively) to pay premiums of over ten percent.

Perhaps the most interesting finding focused on what best predicted a mom’s loyalty to American-made products. Age was a relatively strong predictor. Older moms were, on average, more loyal to American-made products. However, the strongest predictor (nearly twice as strong as age) was how worried a mom was about the current state of the economy – the more worried, the more important it was to buy American-made products.

Given these findings and given the strong influence moms have on purchases of all kinds, companies offering products made in the U.S.A. may be well-advised to call consumer attention to their products’ domestic origins. It may also be advisable for these companies to encourage moms to buy their domestic products via a “pat on the back” in product messaging – reinforce them and make them feel good for doing so. After all, over half of all moms have strong feelings about buying American and over three-quarters claim they’d pay at least some premium for American-made products.

Even if these attitudinal measures turned out to be a bit overstated when translated to actual purchase behavior, there’d still be a considerable percentage of moms looking to support domestic products. Stated another way, it wouldn’t hurt companies to emphasize the domestic origins of their products to moms who don’t find buying American-made products to be all that important – yet there is something to be gained from moms who do think it’s important.

The time to do so is ripe – the time is now.

So as a mom with a current focus on marketing to moms, I’m challenged with how social media fits into my client’s marketing-to-mom mix; when personally, I still haven’t identified how it actually fits into my own life. In Trone’s last survey about “moms and online behavior,” we identified that moms are 21% more likely than the rest of the adult population to be a member of an online social network. Moms, including myself, most frequently ”use online social networks to upload pictures and connect with friends.” I’m convinced that these networks have replaced photo programs such as Snapfish and Kodak Gallery. But are these online activities viewed as entertainment only? And if so, does mom want to be marketed to when she’s surfing through her precious photo memories?

If penetrating mom’s personal time online proves to be difficult, how should social media fit into the marketing mix? Even before social media became the buzzword in marketing, building brand advocates has always been an objective in marketing to moms. Why? Because moms love to talk. They love to talk to other moms about what products they love, what products they hate and the things they just couldn’t live without. There is great joy in knowing that your experience or opinion might have just given another mom a solution to a problem.

The challenge for marketers is identifying these mom advocates and this same challenge continues within the online social space. If you can find the right group, wouldn’t that be considered hitting the jackpot? These moms tell other moms online about a new product, but more importantly they will spread the word offline, thus driving purchase. The question, are the most successful brand strategies for social media driven by the marketer or driven by the mom? Is it the discovery of something great that builds a mom advocate or is it the strategically placed blog posting that draws mom’s attention?

I’d like to think it’s a combination of both. The discovery of something great is about the discovery, it’s not about who placed the information. Working with Trone’s Interactive Director and Blogging PR Specialist, I’m on the way to uncovering the perfect social media fit for my client’s marketing mix. I’m still not sure if that’ll solve how social media fits into my life I think I need a few more hours in my day to find the time to fit it in. In the meantime, I’ll get my advice from those moms who have found the time to uncover all this social networking has to offer.