The recipient of this month's uncoveted "Wet Blanket" award goes to Mott's for their mystifying new campaign for apple juice.
Marcia Cross is their new pitchwoman. Oddly enough, this celebrity mom is pictured not with her own adorable twin daughters, but with someone else's redhead kids. So that leaves us to imagine Ms. Cross in her other public personna: that of the gun-toting, OCD-suffering Bree Hodge from Desperate Housewives, hardly the association Mott's was going for. In advertising, using a spokesperson is called "borrowed interest," yet Mott's has failed to borrow the right kind of interest.
What's more: the ad offers a Wake-Up Call from Marcia Cross to anyone who signs up at Motts.com. Doing so requires a rather lengthy registration, including supplying your full birthdate, a password, and identifying your gender. Call me pessimistic, but this smacks of mom list-building, cloaked behind the stated mission of donating $1 per call to feeding America. What's even stranger is that you get to choose the time of your wake-up call, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., supply the name and phone number of the person you want called, yet this recorded message will never identify you as the sender. So, for the $1 donation, Mott's gets to call your Aunt Sue, your dog walker, or your old college roommate -- possibly rousing them from sleep -- yet never letting on that they've got you to thank for this intrusion.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for ending hunger. But this campaign feels off on so many levels and I suspect that moms everywhere -- whose "authenticity" radars are honed daily by the crafy ways of their very own icecream-seeking kids -- will call this for what it is: a rotten apple.
I used to work in the magazine business. Back in my New York life, I was a promotional copywriter at Cosmopolitan magazine and then at Sports Illustrated. I still remember the delicious sound I would hear every Friday when the mail cart would come cruising down the hallway on the 29th floor of the Time Life Building, filled to the brim with every new issue of the company's many magazines. This all-you-can-read buffet spoiled me for life.
Today, my addiction has not ceased and my household subscribes to 18 magazines:
Fortune, Forbes, Vanity Fair, Time, Sports Illustrated, Sports Illustrated for Kids, Oprah, Real Simple, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Family Circle, Parenting, Cookie, Better Homes & Gardens, More, Metropolitan Home, and Sunset.
So I certainly qualify as a "Maghound" -- the name of a new service from Time Inc. which is the recipient of this month's Warm Blanket Award.
Maghound defines itself as "a magazine lover's best friend." Here's how it works:
You order your magazine subscriptions online from this one centralized website. There are 292 magazines to choose from, including 33 titles that fall into the "Kids, Family and Teen" category. You pay via credit card and can change your subscription choices at any time -- even every month if you wish -- with a quick visit to the site.
I predict this company -- if it executes successfully -- could be a mother's best friend, too. Just think of it: one service that single-handedly solves the biggest problems with magazines today:
- The end of the incessant renewal notices that begin arriving immediately upon starting a subscription. (I call this behavior "The Boy Who Cried 'Last Issue!'") For moms who have gazillions of balls in the air, we resent any company that needlessly tugs on our sleeves, begging for attention.
- Flexibility to "grow" with your family's changing needs. Kids cycle in and out of magazine sweet spots quickly. Sports Illustrated for Kids learned that lesson and smartly launched Sports Illustrated for Teens. Likewise, moms can seamlessly segue from Pregnancy magazine to Parents to Family Fun.
- Pay one time via the Web. Need I say more?
- Accommodates seasonal reading. It's a well-known fact that cooking magazines see an enormous spike in newsstand sales in the Thanksgiving through New Year period. Moms can cycle in Bon Appetit in November, perhaps the only time of year when they're motivated to break out the good china and don an apron. When June rolls around and the kids are out of school, say hello to People, In Style, and other mind-candy beach reads. (This customization feature is also a brilliant maneuveur for the publishers, introducing new readers to new titles, without the commitment of a one-year subscription.)
My only hesitation about the service is that a true Maghound like myself can't use it yet. Because it can't "port" current magazine subscriptions over to Maghound, I have to wait until each of my subscriptions ends, ignoring the flurry of paper notices, and then adding that subscription to my Maghound rotation. But once every last issue of our 18 magazines has run out and been renewed via Maghound, I'm home free. I can't wait -- my tail is wagging already.
1909. That was the year that Good Housekeeping launched its famous Seal of Approval, a telegraphically reassuring mark for mothers everywhere. Hard to imagine how many irons, vacuums, and coffeemakers have been purchased with confidence thanks to the promise of replacement or refund if the product proves defective.
Fast forward a century. Good Housekeeping just unveiled a new seal of approval to join its much older sister: the "Green" Seal of Approval. I credit the magazine for acknowledging the vast number of eco-conscious consumers desperate for some kind of standard to guide their pocketbooks. Yet my initial suspicion (and greatest hope) is that its usefulness won't endure as long as its predecessor. Here's why:
To be eligible for the green seal, a product must meet the criteria for the original seal of approval, plus another set of standards. The second "filter" measures product composition, manufacturing and packaging. It sounds like they will be scrutinizing not only how a product performs once you get it home, but how far it traveled from its manufacturing source to your doorstep, and how long its packaging will survive in a landfill. All good.
My hope is that standards like these, as well as government incentives, will raise the bar for all companies. In the short-term, I imagine the mark might give certain products an advantage in the marketplace, as well as motivate others to get on board. Yet 10, 20, 50 years from now, will there still be great gulfs dividing "green" products from non-green ones? Not like today, I predict.
Even now, many clients come to Maternal Instinct looking to reach "Green Moms." While there are certainly many online communities that fit the bill, I think more apt terminology would be to divide moms into two groups: green moms and uber-green moms. I have yet to meet a woman with an offspring who hopes to reside on this planet for the next 80 years or so, who didn't care deeply about the environment. Plus, this mother/child "green" connection goes both ways. Kids are being raised to be such aware eco-citizens that they regularly lobby at home for greener standards (I still get dirty looks from my 11-year old if my shower lasts more than a few minutes).
In closing, I hope that the Good Housekeeping Green Seal of Approval helps to put itself out of business. Reminds me a bit of an ad campaign that ran about 15 years ago. I can't remember which phone company sponsored it, but the headline is still crisp in my mind. "Someday you won't refer to it as your cell phone. It will just be your phone." This predictive line panned out. Hopefully one day products will just be "products" -- assumed to be green to even stay in the game --and Moms will once again just be "moms."
Trend spotting is not my forte. Yet there is one trend peaking now that I called a number of years ago. I distinctly remember speaking the following words to a colleague:
"Something big is coming. I'm not sure what it's going to be called, or who's going to own it, but it's all about shortcuts for mothers. Combining pre-made things with homemade things."
What it turns out to be called is Semi-Homemade and the person who coined it -- and owns it -- is Sandra Lee.
Just a few weeks ago, Sandra Lee launched her Semi-Homemade Magazine, the final jewel in the crown of her media empire which now includes a Food Network TV show, website, and a fleet of cookbooks.
Her value proposition to moms is spot-on and well-scripted: "Everything follows my 70/30 rule. 70% store-bought, ready-made ingredients and 30% fresh ingredients which allow you to take 100% of the credit."
What mother wouldn't warm up to this promise? Remember the famous opening to the book I Don't Know How She Does It where the overwrought mom is molesting her perfect store-bought cake to make it appear fresh from her own kitchen for the school bake sale?
Everything Sandra Lee does lives up to her Three-A Test: it has to be Attainable, Approachable, and Affordable. She wisely side-stepped the Fourth A which makes Martha Stewart so polarizing: Arrogant. I'll never forget watching Martha sign-off her TV program, proudly holding up her spray-painted holiday pine cones, while cluelessly insulting 99% of her viewers with these words: "Put a basket of these pine cones next to ALL the fireplaces in your home."
So finally, between being a Slacker Mom and a Martha Mom, there's a middle ground we all can wrap our arms around.
I am the founder and creative director of Maternal Instinct, a Palo Alto agency of creative problem solvers for marketing to moms. I am lucky enough to get paid to spend my days helping big and small corporations figure out how to make moms want to do business with them. (I don’t get paid for my nights and weekends, caring for my two boys, which is far, far more tiring.)
My 20-year advertising career spans both coasts: in New York (my hometown) and San Francisco, my home today with husband Gene and boys, Henry and Benjamin. I have peddled products for every industry -- credit cards, wine, cars, magazines, jewelry, hotels, software, phone service -- and even picked up a Clio and a few ADDYs along the way.
