I'm embarking on a week-long study of choice. Not the political kind. The kind that marketers offer you (or not). It could be different flavors, shipping schedules, payment options, or email frequency.
It could be a choice of charity for a cash back donation, mild/medium/hot sauce, indoor or outdoor seating, smoking or non-smoking, morning or afternoon appointment, red or white, FastPass or cash. I have a theory about how choice affects customer satisfaction, especially in the mom market.
This is where you come in. The more perspectives I get, the more informed blog post I'll write about choice in the end. So...please keep your eyes open this week for what choices you are offered in the course of your daily life. Write 'em down and put them in the comments section of this post. Or email them to me. See, you've got one choice already!
Remember that old Wells Fargo ad, when online banking was just taking off, that proclaimed "We've seen the future of banking and it looks a lot like your kitchen"? Well, I've seen the future of retail and it looks a lot like your living room.
Call it what you will. Social selling. Direct sales. Selling groups. Even home-party businesses. What was once the purview of Tupperware and Avon has exploded into categories ranging from candles to wine, vitamins to jewelry, toys to well...sex toys. There's even a site called HostaPartyonline.com that lists 52 different selling opportunities.
The latest statistics from Direct Selling Association reveal that this is a $29.6 billion industry in the U.S. Of their impressive breakdown of stats, two figures jumped out at me:
- 86.4% of direct sellers are female - 91.1% of direct sellers work part-time
For those of you who haven't had your coffee yet, allow me to connect the dots: MOMS! It's no wonder that direct selling is so appealing to moms. It allows women to return to work on their own terms and schedules, make some dough, get to see friends (and make new ones), and high-tail it out of the house without kids in tow.
Over the year, I have been invited (typically via evite) to countless such parties, my favorites being for the very design-savvy Stella and Dot jewelry company, Silpada (a good runner-up in the jewelry business), and CAbi, a great line of women's clothing.
If your product lends itself to social selling, the path begins by extending your e-commerce site to this new distribution channel. Then the task of recruiting your sales force begins. Maria Bailey, in her book Mom 3.0, offers sage advice: target moms at a changing point in their lives. The real sweet spot, she shares, is moms with kids in kindergarten or first grade, suddenly in possession of a 6-8 hour window of freedom.
And just as this Mom wave is cresting, someone has figured out how even more dollar signs can be made: through Dads. Last week, the San Francisco chronicle published a story about an even newer trend: Man Cave parties. A new Minnesota company is betting that the same atmosphere that works its sales seduction on women will make guys show up to test out new barbecue gear. I say it's a winning idea. Kind of a men's book club without the book.
What do you think of this trend? Have you been to or hosted a home-based selling party? Could your brand possibly get a shot in the arm from enlisting a direct sales force?
Many moons ago, I wrote an ad campaign for one of the first online sites to deliver local news. I still remember the headline:
75% of car accidents happen within a few miles from home. Come to think of it, 75% of everything does.
This truth about life is a perfect explanation for the exploding growth of hyperlocal mobile technology. If you’re new to this idea, it boils down to this: smart phones can pinpoint where you are, thereby enabling you to find news, deals, friends – you name it – within proximity to you.
The number of companies jumping on the bandwagon are too extensive to list here. Once gun-shy VCs are investing like crazy in start-ups like Outside.in and bigger fish like FourSquare, CitySquares, Gowalla and Loopt. MSNBC purchased EveryBlock, AOL bought Patch Media Group and Going Inc, and Google's unsuccessful bid for Yelp (somehow $550 million wasn't enough) showcases its desire to incorporate user reviews into its mobile homepage, already souped up with Near Me Now functionality.
For moms, who are always on the go, hyperlocal presents new opportunities for retailers to not just hit a moving target -- but to motivate that target to come in and buy. Countless companies are offering mobile coupons, crowdsourcing to give shoppers outside opinions before purchasing, and other shopping incentives which are all good, good, good.
Yet I'm surprised by how many marketers seem to write about localized couponing and comparison tools as the holy grail of mobile apps. Where my mind really gets jazzed is in thinking of ways this technology can make life better and easier for moms.
Here’s where I imagine (and hope) hyperlocal is headed:
- Find out which friends are at which parks for spontaneous playdates
- Locate restaurants/dry cleaners/pharmacies that will do sidewalk delivery, letting you stay in the car with a sleeping (or grumpy) child
- Track outbreaks of viruses in your area
- Locate the closest food bank to drop off extra food after a birthday party, school potluck or other event
- Track the whereabouts of the ice cream truck on sweltering summer days
- Find restaurants that have nut-free, gluten-free, vegetarian or kid-friendly foods
- Pinpoint the ski mountain (and runs) with the shortest lift lines so kids can ski more, wait less
- Flag down the Goodwill truck when it’s in your neighborhood, unloading that Exersaucer, crib, bike, or other large item your child has outgrown
- Check out who’s at the dog park and head over when Fido’s favorite pal shows up
- Issue Amber alerts immediately within a precise radius that grows larger as the day progresses
- Locate the safest spots to congregate after an earthquake or other emergency
- Meet up with families with same-aged kids when traveling
- Enable Amazing Race style birthday parties for older kids who check in at certain locations using FourSquare to collect points and get their next clues
- Connect mom bloggers to an entire new source of readers: others in her zip code
These are just some of the possible applications for hyperlocal. How might they enable you to reach your target consumer or create a positive dialogue with her? What other directions do you hope mobile is headed?
One of my favorite sayings of late is "If you don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less."
Perfect words of caution to this month's Wet Blanket Award winner: Preschool Prep Series. The name itself is incriminating. It evokes images of chubby toddlers donning starchy private school uniforms, cramming for that all-important preschool admittance exam.
Did this company not get the memo that "slow parenting" and "unschooling" kids until first grade are growing trends, so much so that they were discussed in the very issue of Parents magazine that this ad appeared? Did they not know that Walt Disney (current owners of Baby Einstein) is offering refunds to parents who bought the DVDs, due to the threat of a class-action lawsuit charging the videos had been fraudulently marketed as educational?
What really mystifies me about this ad campaign (aside from its kitchen-sink art direction and exclamation-point-happy copy) is that the company missed its chance at reinvention. Along the footer is a quiet mention of a line of Board Books and Coloring Books. Now is the time to promote these offerings to top billing.
Parents and pediatricians are both aware of the frightening statistic that by the time a U.S. child gets to kindergarten, they've watched 5,000 hours of TV. Anyone in child literacy knows that reading aloud to kids during the first few years of life is the single greatest indicator of that child's success in school. Yet Preschool Prep Series still brazenly pronounces that kids can "master upper and lowercase letters in two weeks!" simply by watching their videos. Might be true, but irrelevant. Literacy isn't a race; it's a marathon. And it would have been far better had Preschool Prep Series run with this idea and embraced change early instead of late.
Remember the phrase "Don't take any wooden nickels?" If someone can take something so seemingly worthless as a wooden nickel and create value around it, then there's a lesson there.
Teaching the lesson is none other than my local hardware store, Ace Hardware. If you bring your own bag, or bypass taking one when checking out, they hand you a wooden nickel. You then turn around and go over to a table set up in the store where 3 barrels appear. They are labeled:
You drop your nickel into the barrel of your choice, where it makes a satisfying thud. Five cents goes to the schools of your choice.
There are countless retailers offering discounts for bring-your-own-bag green behavior. But I have yet to see one that rewards the customer is such a memorable way. The fact that the barrels are set up away from the checkout and that the customer "owns" the experience of dropping it in is so very smart.
Walking out of the store this morning, I thought to myself "What is Maternal Instinct's wooden nickel?" What is yours? How could you encourage behavior from your clients or customers with a simple act like this?
All I can say is thank you to Sarah Haskins of current tv for watching "hundreds of hours of ads" this year so I didn't have to. This fun video about her observations reveals that we've still got a long way to go, baby. Sarah thought that maybe we can't be perfect wives, mothers, career women, and super-hot sex babes all at once. But then she turned on the TV and remembered that an abundance of stuff makes anything possible. When you're a woman, happiness is just one purchase away.
This video is a perfect testament to why 90% of women feel misunderstood by advertisers. And once again, I will connect that statistic to another: only 3% of creative directors are women. Let's hope 2010 is the year of bringing that first figure down and the second one way, way up.
Companies that have been around forever face the risk of looking their age. The key to longevity is to stick to what you're known for, but evolve to meet new consumer demand. Few companies do it well. The winners that come to mind are Coach, Disney, HP, Avon and...Hallmark. Founded in 1910, Hallmark precedes these other long-timers by more than a decade, making their relevance to today's customer all the more notable.
Remember "when you care enough to send the very best"? A great tagline for earlier times. Hallmark has wisely evolved to "A card. It's the biggest little thing you can do." Their line of 99 cent cards supports this notion that a tiny bit of effort -- and outlay of cash -- can make a difference in someone's life. Such a smart shift in understanding your customer. Moms want to do it all, but fall short due to the demands of life. Hallmark's print and TV spots show a keen understanding of this dilemma, offering beautifully presented examples of how a well-timed card can deliver boosts like Appreciation, Confidence, and Guts in the chaos of everyday life.
Hallmark's forward-thinking marketing doesn't end with creative. They consistently push the envelope (pardon the pun) with format and innovation. They introduced musical cards, and now offer DVD holiday greetings, mobile greetings, an address-book builder to facilitate holiday mailings, a line of mom-to-mom cards which encourage "proudly imperfect moms," same-sex marriage cards, and recordable storybooks, a grandparent's dream product so desirable that it sold out before Christmas. So many innovations from a company that could easily have rested on their laurels and become Harvard Business School's ultimate case study in fuddy-duddiness. I surprised even myself when visiting a Hallmark Gold Crown store; I found there gorgeous embossed stationery (I'm a major paper snob and letterpress fan), a line of RED cards supporting the Global Fund for AIDS, even martini glasses.
On that note, I raise a glass to Hallmark, recipient of this month's Warm Blanket Award for marketing to moms masterfully.
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.
