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.
For any of you who caught my last post about the M2Moms Conference, you'll recall that mobile was cited as critical for reaching moms. According to Scarborough Research, working moms spend 21% more than average mobile users on wireless bills and are 42% more likely to download mobile content. Moms are prime targets for mobile, and more and more companies are figuring out how to get their brands in her hands.
I've been reading up on mobile for a few months now, to make sure I can advise Maternal Instinct's clients well. I had the good fortune of reading an article by Ben Gaddis, Director of Mobile and Emerging Media Strategy at T3, a Top 100 agency with offices in Austin, NY and San Francisco. Rather than try to summarize what I took away from Ben's article, I asked if he'd grant an interview to Maternal Instinct. He graciously agreed.
So for once I'm not doing the writing -- but the asking -- and Ben is doing the answering.
“What kind of skills should Maternal Instinct -- or any agency -- have to meet the needs of this new medium?”
Good creative is good creative whether it’s on a gigantic billboard or a 2 1/4” x 3” screen. People focus too much on the technology and less on why the consumer will care. Technology shouldn’t get in the way of delivering valuable information to moms on their mobile devices. Find the right technology provider – someone who has figured out how to do it well – and let the technology become secondary. Once creatives know whatever parameters they’re working within, they can still fill it with the biggest idea possible. Rather than focusing on the mobile phone itself, think in terms of the audience – mobile moms – and their goals.
“What uses of mobile advertising hold the most promise for companies targeting moms?”
There are many channels within mobile. You can buy banner ads on sites that target moms. Or you can include mobile in a larger print or broadcast campaign. Think about what sites the moms who might buy your product use on their phones. That might be gaming, recipe sites, shopping sites. Kraft created iFood which is now a top-selling application for moms. You can create your own application or buy a tag at the end of news alerts.
“In a time when ad budgets are dwindling, how can companies justify adding mobile to the mix?”
I would caution you not to look at it as a “have to add” to the mix in addition to, or in place of, something else. Instead think about where dollars make the most sense. If you’re targeting moms age 24-35, 99% of the time, they have their phone with them. You simply can’t get this kind of proximity to moms with TV or Internet or radio. Yet you’re devoting 85% of your budget to broadcast? Why? Mobile is cheaper, more effective, and trackable in terms of performance. That’s why mobile ad budgets are increasing – and predicted to continue to do so – at a time when other budgets are being slashed. Knowing all this, I’d turn the question around to any naysayers in your agency and say “how can we justify NOT adding mobile.”
“How should we optimize our websites – and our clients’ sites -- for mobile use?”
Experience is the #1 goal. Make sure your site loads fast, that the images fit no matter the size of the handset, and that content is relevant to a mom on the go. Things like store locator and phone number are obvious musts. It’s unlikely she's looking for a job opportunity or your company blog from her phone.
“What resources do you recommend to people who want to learn more?”
MobileMarketer.com. Dig into the case studies, which are extensive. TechCrunch has a blog called MobileCrunch. And dotmobi has a couple of blogs that are worth reading, both for developers and creatives.
AYSO (American Youth Soccer Organization) is jokingly referred to by parents as "All Your Saturdays Occupied." You can't go anywhere around Palo Alto (my hometown) without seeing countless kids in neon jerseys and matching socks, either en route to a game or headed home.
The time demand on families is considerable. There's the official stuff like practices and games and volunteer refereeing and coaching. And the less official tasks of snack assignments, banner set-up, ball transport, locating two matching cleats on game day, etc., etc. But it's your kids. And it's soccer. So you cheer from the sidelines and you might even alter your family laundry day to work with the schedule.
Yet AYSO receives this month's uncoveted Wet Blanket Award for the dreaded Picture Day. Every year, one poor parent (last year it was yours truly) accepts the unhappy task of trying to schedule their team's slot for team pictures. Ideally you want it to be about an hour before a game when kids are already suited up in their uniforms, but not yet sweaty. Your likelihood for getting this time slot is about equal to finding those Publisher's Clearinghouse folks on your doorstep.
So you email your team, telling them of the highly inconvenient time slot you've been assigned, and every family groans and moans.
Then 12 players waste time getting into their uniform and 12 parents waste time (and gas!) driving to the Photo Day location. According to the AYSO website, there are 6,000,000 (yes, that's SIX MILLION) registered players. Imagine the mind-boggling time- and energy-suck every single one of them suffers, thanks to Picture Day.
Here's the clincher: all these families have phones with cameras and likely have digital cameras at home. A google search for "online photo sharing" yields 46 million results. We live in an age where getting a good shot of a team is monkey simple and can be done right before the game, right at the field, with everyone's photos available to them THAT VERY DAY.
Won't someone please blow the whistle on this insanity?
Kellogg's Nutrigrain Campaign: Love It. Now Extend It.
Proof positive that a product doesn’t need to be sexy and a concept doesn’t need to be wildly creative to be successful.
Hats off to the folks at Kellogg’s who appear to be responsible for their own new TV campaign for Nutrigrain Bars.
Things to love about this campaign:
1). It’s simple
2). It’s contextual
3). We don’t see the person so we become the person
4). It has a simple, believable takeaway
5). It has legs. If I had the Marketing Director's ear, here's what I'd tell her:
"Create another spot aimed at moms with the 'snack-cam' following a kid from the donuts at soccer practice to the video game on the couch to the chauffeured roundtrip to school. The 'after' segment will feature a bike commute to school, fruit and Nutrigrain bars after practice, a game of good old-fashioned basketball with Dad in the driveway, maybe even, dare I say it, flossing..."
Perhaps the ultimate irony of being a mom is that after a long day of several small people pawing at you, the ultimate indulgence would be to surrender yourself to the expert hands of one large person.
Yet why don't moms -- most in need of massage -- get massage?
Two reasons:
No Time. Most massage therapists schedule weeks in advance and many do not offer evening appointments.
No Money. Who can justify $100+ an hour for something "unnecessary," especially if you may have sacrificed your salary for the unpaid career of mothering.
This nationwide "chain" of 810 massage clinics offers massage for just $49 an hour. They are open seven days a week and stay open until 10 p.m. every weekday. They have so many massage therapists that you really can get an "on-call" massage as easily as a booked-in-advance one.
This business model is ingenious. Too bad the marketing folks aren't smart enough to shout this positioning right from the home page. Buried in the "About Us" section of the website is this copy which would make any mother swoon:
We have learned the primary reasons that people do not receive massages on a regular basis are time and price. Massage Envy has partnered with massage therapists whose prime objective is to be available more hours and charge less so that more people can take advantage of their services. We have utilized a membership based approach that brings massage therapy out of the elite and expensive circle and makes it available to everyone. We are committed to delivering a highly professional, very convenient and affordable experience every time.
As if we couldn't love this company any more, they are offering $35 massages on September 15 as a Breast Cancer fundraiser. From all of us tired moms, we say to Massage Envy: "Thanks. We are putty in your hands."
1). Twitter matters or Harvard Business School wouldn't be studying it.
2). Early adopters are monopolizing the Tweetsphere.
This study doesn't surprise me. I am astonished daily to see dozens of tweets from a single person I'm following, often posted within seconds of one another, so that their thumbnail mug appears like a repeating pattern down the left-hand column of my web page.
Here's what I don't get: when do these people work?
I believe in social media. I believe Twitter is a valuable method for reaching customers and quickly disseminating information.
I also happen to believe that technologies like these can be so disruptive that true thinking -- that which requires longer increments than a few minutes -- is bypassed to compete in the Internet's seductive popularity contest of amassing followers at any cost.
This subject resurfaced for me today because of a blog posting I saw about a real-world experiment. The author is purposefully limiting his Internet usage to two hours a day simply because it's the only way he can get his work done. In a truly ironic twist, it took an Internet outage for this guy to grasp a real lightbulb moment. In the absense of Twitter/Facebook/Craigslist (insert your own Internet time-suck here) distractions, real genius flowers.
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.
