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Has this happened to anyone else? One day, I signed in to Facebook to see what my friends were up to and I didn’t recognize anyone’s profile pic. My Facebook page had been taken over by a bunch of babies. The moms and dads I know have every reason to be proud of those very cute baby faces, but there’s something wrong about seeing the face of a 2-year old next to a hangover-themed status update, or an ultrasound picture having a case of the Mondays. That’s not to mention the babies that now have their own accounts or this strange phenomenon of fetuses tweeting from the womb. (Personal rule – you must be at least 3 feet tall and able to form complete sentences before I will follow or friend you.)
Before they even type in their first www dot, the digital footprint of this next generation is going to be huge. With all the discussion around the permanence of anything uploaded to Facebook, Twitter or elsewhere on the Interwebs – will there soon be whole industries dedicated to pulling and cataloging someone’s digital journey, from their mom and dad’s first tweet or status update that baby was on the way? Or will there be entire industries devoted to creating blank digital slates for kids whose parents have shared every detail of their early lives? Potty and bathtub pictures used to be the ultimate in parental embarrassment, but they have nothing on some of the TMI details parents share, today.
I’m looking forward to following this trend over the next several years and seeing where and how I draw the lines, myself. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go update my cat’s blog.
Image by TedsBlog on Flickr
When I say mom’s burden, I’m not talking about moms’ stereotypical overstuffed calendar. And please don’t think for a second that I’m referring to annoying grass stains, bathtub stains, or anything else that may have vexed and flustered supermoms in black and white sitcoms.
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 sa
id 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?
The mom blogger population is a great group; they are dynamic, competitive, compassionate and large in numbers. These bloggers have influence over their peers and are influenced by their peers. However, learning to treat each of these bloggers as an individual is where a brand stands to gain some trust, respect and eventually support. Just like each of our moms and any mom you know, they are different. They face different challenges, have different backgrounds and have different interests and values. Mashable’s article, Top 10 Misconceptions About Mommy Bloggers, is a good way to start thinking about mom bloggers. But I offer these other tips from experience:
• Use other social media platforms. Mommy bloggers will often leave the smaller personal details about their life out of their blog posts. Twitter and Facebook are great ways to find out these little tidbits of information. Use these pieces of information to connect with them on personal level. If one of your mom bloggers has a funny story about their kids, respond to it on twitter or include it your next email to them. It shows you care.
• Be a resource. Thinking that a blogger should just help you will not help you win over this audience. A brand needs to create content and act as a resource for their target bloggers. Let them know that you understand their lives are crazy and there is not always time to blog. Becoming a resource and trusted partner will be the basis for a strong relationship.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for advice. These mommy bloggers are the experts in their world. If you are creating content or looking to start a relationship with new bloggers, as your current bloggers. Just like networking in person, a personal introduction goes a long way with this group.
When a mom blogger believes in a brand or campaign, it comes through in their posts. Creating a personal relationship with each of those bloggers allows them to see that your brand values the same things they do and cares about the success of their blog, not just the success of the brand. Mommy bloggers have a large amount of influence over each other and over their readership. Developing a genuine personal connection with these bloggers is the first step towards having their support.
Diapers. Every baby needs them. Every mom buys them. So when Pampers introduced “the biggest innovation in diapers in 25 years” the mom world was watching and ready to buy. So it has been very interesting to watch the Pampers Dry Max introduction and social discussion unfold as a bystander with no skin in the game, literally.
As all good brands do, Pampers tested the diapers on thousands of babies with positive feedback from parents. One test resulted in a 92% approval rating. Not only did Dry Max keep moisture away from babies’ skin but also was much more environmentally friendly. In fact, it could reduce diaper disposal by 20 million pounds of trash a year. Here at Trone®, we call these types of motivations, Tugs™. Tugs occur when one is feeling pulled by the knowledge of long-term and short-term benefits and consequences. Traditionally, disposable diapers have had warring Tugs: convenience and cleanliness vs. the environmental waste and expense.
I have to say, initially, I thought Pampers had a winning Tugs combination: moms feel good about protecting baby, moms feel good about their environmental contribution.
And then came the social conversation. Dry Max, it seems worked a little too well. Moms started chatting to see who else had a baby with severe diaper rash after trying the diaper. Many moms were having the same rash issue with the new diaper and this social conversation provided the validation they sought.
I even got to experience the phenomenon myself. At a meeting, I mentioned this Pampers dilemma and how interesting I found it to be. A young mother at the agency chimed in to say how much she loved Dry Max diapers. I inquired if her child had experienced any diaper rash. The wheels in her mind were racing, she looked at me and said, “We do have red splotches. I had no idea they were caused by the diaper. I’ve got to go online and check it out.”
As hard as a brand tries, and I do believe Pampers did all they could do to research their new diaper, the court of public opinion will be the ultimate judge of success. And that court has a new global home.
Remember the time, oh, say 15 years ago, when something didn’t work and we just stopped using it? Diapers are such a motivating topic for moms that as I looked for the P&G research, all I found were mom organizations raising money for research for a civil suit against P&G. Social media is like a fire and can be used to cook the food or burn down the kitchen. How consumers respond to brands has changed forever. (That really isn’t a diaper pun.) What’s your opinion on how social media played a major role in the Pampers Dry Max launch?
Moms are the fastest growing audience in the digital space, combine that with their hold over a large part of the economy and you have a powerful audience. At the 2010 Marketing to the Digital Moms Conference in Toronto on June 2nd and 3rd, Jenny Rowland and Robin Yontz, part of Trone’s Mom Team, will present “Growing the Loyalty of Relationship Mom”. The presentation will focus on the online strategies that trigger ultimate brand loyalty with the mom audience.
For more information about Trone’s Mom Team visit www.trone.com/moms.
As the new (again) dad of a four day old precious baby girl, my wife and I have been refining the keep-your-sanity-with-an-infant processes we first started a little over three years ago. My wife, ever the analyst (also a math major/teacher/tutor), pointed out that our son was three hundred and sixty five times older than our daughter yesterday. This is the same mom who wrote a web application to help track her diet and workout schedule back in 2003 (before the days of the likes of Lose it!). We have started using an application called Total Baby to track messy diapers, bottles, sleeping, medicines and anything else we would want to log/track. It will be fun to pull out the report at our first doctor visit.
How does all this relate to Trone’s blog, other than to brag on my new daughter? Well, I guess what I’m trying to say is my wife fits well into the Data Darlings mom type referenced in our moms study from November of last year. Not that all Data Darlings are as technical or data savvy as my wife, but there are many of the same foundational underpinnings. Relying on data makes Data Darlings the go-to person in their peer group for insights on brands. Fortunately, they’re also highly informed and constantly seek to be more so. All of this can be very beneficial when marketing to them, assuming you start and end in the right place.
Bottom line: when marketing, derive insights from data, create a reasonable compelling plan from that data, structure the data to hit your target and, especially if your target is Data Darlings moms, enjoy watching the data come full circle to allow you to derive your next set of deeper insights.
We recently reported some preliminary results of a study fielded to 425 moms in February, 2010. A significant portion of that study was dedicated to respondents’ interaction with wholesale clubs. And, some surprising facts came to the fore.
Our interest in clubs was driven by two key factors. The first was the notable shift in mom’s shopping behavior as a result of the economy. The second was the unique communication challenges of a member-only environment.
As expected, clubs have benefitted from the economic downturn.
46% of the moms in our sample are members of a club, with one in nine club members belonging to two or more. Of those members, just over half (54%) visit the club one or more times a month. And, 52% of the members indicated that they had increased the volume of their purchases at clubs as a means of controlling their spending during the economic downturn.
For members, the rise in club purchases approached the most popular money-saving activities identified by moms at large. In the aggregate, the two most popular means of controlling spending were using more coupons (63%) and paying more attention to in-store offers (72%).
Club shoppers still favor “old school” communication.
When queried about their preferences regarding communication from their club(s) on a range of subject matter, moms adopted a very traditional stance. General, top 2 box interest in the media were:
Twitter – 11%
Club blogs – 14%
Facebook page – 21%
Email – 51%
Direct Mail – 56%
Somewhat surprisingly, among those interested in specific topics, the disparity between the preference for “old media” and “new media” actually grew—categorically. For example, as it related to notification of upcoming promotions, top two box interest in the communication vehicles was:
Twitter – 7%
Club blogs – 8%
Facebook page – 14%
Email – 58%
Direct Mail – 75%
Even in lower-interest categories such as “money saving tips for their home,” club shoppers displayed a preference for being communicated to via a traditional medium over the more contemporary options. Of note in this category was the interest shift between email and direct mail.
Twitter – 5%
Club blogs – 11%
Facebook page – 17%
Email – 68%
Direct Mail – 49%
This study establishes an important framework for understanding the value of various communication vehicles, specifically for the club channel but, with implications for other retail and product brands. It does not, however, account for all the marketplace dynamics.
All customers are not created equal.
Retailers have long known that some customers are of substantially greater value than others based on the volume of their purchases. In recent years great strides have been made in leveraging that knowledge. Supermarkets, airlines, hotels and many other industries have successfully (or less so) created loyalty programs to track and reward customer purchase behavior.
All brands, be they retail, product or service, have also gained an appreciation of the value of their customers as brand advocates. For example, in this study, moms were half again as likely to identify family and friends as important sources of information on children’s products than any other source. The difficulty lies in identifying who the advocates are and how to provide them the necessary information and motivation to become active disciples for the brand.
Clearly, the results of the study referenced above indicate that while “new media” has some value for wholesale clubs, traditional vehicles such as email and direct mail offer a substantially greater opportunity. What the study does not take into account, but a future study will, is the importance of the various media to those moms who are most likely to influence others.
Organizations like Trone® and Forrester have identified that a relatively small group of people (~ 25%) are the primary contributors in social media environments. These moms can have an exponential impact on a brand’s spending. However, before they can disseminate information, they must first accumulate it and it will be the brands (retail, product or service) that best understand how and where to reach them that will be most successful.
In June of 2009 we reported on the impact the unstable economic environment was having on mom’s relationship with brands. With the economy stabilizing somewhat, we felt it was a good time to review the status of those mom-brand relationships.
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.
Today’s mom is ‘connected’ in more ways than you can count. She has a Blackberry or an iPhone. She has a Facebook page and Twitter account. And she no longer seeks information only from books. She reads blogs!
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.
Trone, Inc. recently (October 2009) conducted a nationwide study of over 900 mothers with children aged 18 or under. Given the state of the economy, one topic the study examined was changes in their shopping behavior across seven key product categories: children’s clothes, their own clothes, household cleaning products, food and drinks for the children, soaps and shampoos, detergents and paper products such as napkins and paper towels.
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.
