How are brands using social nets to reach moms?
Unfortunately (and somewhat surprisingly), many brands still aren't doing much of anything at all. The top advertiser on Facebook in 2008 was a public service ad supporting the National Problem Gambling Hotline. Of course there were ads for telecom companies and financial services, but those appeared to be driven by a larger ad network buy than part of a specific social media strategy. There were, however, a few brands that did stand out.
Tide
Tide's "Dress to the Sevens with Tim Gunn" program is a great example of using a social network to connect with moms -- and women in general -- about a special interest area. Aligned with Fashion Week, Tide partnered with Tim Gunn, famous for the Bravo TV reality show "Project Runway," to bring style tips to moms on MySpace. Ads featuring the style expert are also now running on Facebook.
Betty Crocker
Betty Crocker uses MySpace to provide recipes, links to coupons, and fun seasonal interactive features like the Chocolate Love Spinner for Valentines Day. This isn't rocket science; we've all seen this type of campaign somewhere else before. It's just a matter of bringing useful content one step closer to the users where they're spending their time.
Mercedes GLK
Aside from well executed promotions and brand pages leveraging the massive audience of social nets, advertisers have been trying to find ways to enlist vocal networkers to participate. One such example can be seen in a recent effort for the Mercedes GLK model. Mercedes enlisted popular blogger and mom Amy Allen Clark (of MomAdvice.com, a part of the Real Girls Media network) to conduct test drives and post the reviews on her blog. Readers are invited to comment for a chance to win gift cards.
While the campaign itself isn't executed on a social network, it's generating a conversation about the vehicle and how specific product attributes fit within a mother's busy life. It's being promoted via widgets on other mom's blogs and some custom ad units on DivineCaroline, which features friending capabilities and other social network components. The campaign may have been even stronger if Mercedes had leveraged those components and provided DivineCaroline users an easier way to share the promotion with their friends.
As with all forms of media that incorporate consumer-generated content, advertisers that target moms on social sites have to be ready to take the good with the bad. We all know what happened to Motrin recently when it wasn't prepared -- if you don't, just Google "motrin moms." A surprisingly cohesive group of connected moms took issue with a Motrin video and used the latest social media tools to voice their displeasure. Thanks to the power of Twitter, Motrin and its agencies got a painful lesson in how to plan for the wave of responses, both positive and negative, that can come from a campaign.
So what should you consider for your brand?
<< Previous page | Next page >>
