Elevating your product from features and benefits to a larger emotional takeaway is always smart, especially if you do it as thoughtfully as Stouffer's has with their Let's Fix Dinner campaign. After all, why sell noodles when you can sell nostalgia.

The "Let's Fix Dinner" microsite introduces the concept with compelling (and believable) copy:

Whatever happened to family dinner?

Though it's never been more difficult, it's also never been more important to make this time to connect. The benefits of family dinner are just so powerful.

At Stouffer's, we believe there's no better place for our families than the dining room table...and we want to help you get there.

The campaign consists of:

Print Ads, including one with my favorite headline: Are your kids more likely to talk if their mouths are full? Following copy reads: Studies show 72% of teens who ate often with their families said they would go to their parents if they had a problem. Ads also connect the act of eating en famille with lower rates of eating disorders in girls, lower rates of teen drinking and drug use, and increased marital happiness.

An Online Dinner Survey: 6 simple questions about your family's habits and how you compare to other families surveyed.

A Let's Fix Dinner Challenge: An invitation to challenge your own family to eat together more often. A sticky little app that lets you keep a daily meal log, download coupons, and enter a sweepstakes.

Blogger Roundtable: Stouffer's invited 15 influential bloggers and topical experts to start an ongoing conversation about dinner in America via their own blogs, all linkable from the Stouffer's Let's Fix Dinner site.

Family Webisodes: Reality-TV style vignettes of five families all aiming to increase their togetherness time.

Facebook Integration: The campaign not only lives on its Facebook Fan page, but wall postings are sprinkled throughout the microsite.

Twitter: Under the handle Letsfixdinner, Stouffer's is introducing their campaign to hundreds of hungry Tweeples.

Short of skywriting, Stouffer's has utilized every tool available to get the word out about this initiative -- smartly using both paid and unpaid media. It's perfectly timed for tough economic times when consumers are eating out less often. And as a Creative Director, I salute agency JWT New York for producing ads that have just the right homespun tone and visual appeal.

For nothing overlooked and everything prepared perfectly, this month's Warm Blanket Award can be found in your grocer's freezer: well done, Stouffer's.

Labels: dinnertime, Facebook, Mom Bloggers, mom marketing award

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.

Welcome to a new feature of Maternal Journal. Every month we'll highlight one company whose marketing misses the mark of connecting with moms (according to our What's Your Blanket? litmus test).

So, the first-ever Wet Blanket Award goes to... (drumroll, please)

T-Mobile.



The ad copy reads as follows:

I Take My Family Everywhere I Run.

I hear from them at least once a mile. Luckily T-Mobile proved my signal strength, street by street, before I signed up. Which is important, if I get a crisis call about a missing binkie. When it comes to my coverage, T-Mobile works great.

This ad is a perfect example of a message that got 90% of it right, but ruined the whole thing with one oversight. I can see the creative brief in my mind, stating correctly that moms need to feel reachable by their families, especially when they are going to attempt something as luxuriously "selfish" as exercising. Yet needing to feel reachable, and being tethered to the family's every last need, are two separate things.

"I hear from them at least once a mile" opens the ad copy. You mean to tell me that the caretaker for these children cannot operate without mom's help for seven to ten minutes at a stretch? Dads everywhere should be insulted by this ad (I'm sure the super-capable guys at DadLabs would be stewing about it right now if they weren't too busy single-handedly running the PTA, driving the carpool, and coaching soccer).

She wants to take her family everywhere she runs: YES. But she does not want to hear from them unless there is a real emergency. Do not call these pesky interruptions "crisis calls." This is her coveted "me" time. T-Mobile has taken what could be a huge support for her in this way -- good coverage so she can forget about her family -- and ruined it by suggesting that it will turn her into Mom 911, 24/7, forced into thinking of them every 20 city blocks.

That's it for today. And lest you think Maternal Instinct only scans for the negative, we will also highlight success via the Warm Blanket Award (stay tuned: Award #1 is coming next week).

Labels: DadLabs, mom marketing award, T-Mobile

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.