Marketing Roadmaps

Gender

The Mommy Card

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Last week while listening to Pandora, I heard a commercial for VistaPrint promoting “mommy cards” (along with networking cards and dating cards.)

What exactly is a “mommy card,” I wondered (and tweeted.)

Now before, you jump in and think, “how stupid are you, Susan, to not know what a “mommy card” is,” rest assured, I had a pretty good idea of what was intended.  I just thought it was a bit silly and more than a bit sexist.

Unless you also have a separate line of  “daddy cards,” promoting the “mommy card”  associates the act of parenting entirely with one gender. And that is sexist.  Undoubtedly inadvertent but still….

The term “calling card” seems perfectly suitable if you don’t want to call it a business card due to the more personal nature of the information.  Or if you need to be more descriptive, call it a Family Card or a Parent Card, since it lists important family information that a parent might want to share with a babysitter or the parents of their children’s friends.

But this isn’t a post about sexism or gender bias. If I was going to stop at my rant about “the mommy card,” this post would be over on my personal blog Snapshot Chronicles.

Here, I write about marketing and social media. And I’d like you to take away two marketing lessons from my Twitter exchange about “mommy cards.”

First, if your brand is criticized online, you need to figure out if the critic is a rational individual or a wing-nut. Ignore the wing-nuts and engage with the rational ones. VistaPrint figured out I was a rational human being, and reached out to me on Friday.

The company Twitter persona told me  why they promoted them as “mommy cards” and promised to share my feedback with the product team.

 

As I said in my tweets, I like the company. I’m a customer. I just didn’t like the concept of the “mommy card.” Full props to them for monitoring the Twitter stream and actively engaging with a customer. Makes it that much more likely that they’ll get my Christmas calendar order again this year.

Lesson number 2: VistaPrint told me that they used the term “mommy card” because the research indicated they should. My reply was that research didn’t make the term any less sexist.I firmly believe you can market calling cards to mothers without calling them “mommy cards.”

Now, you may disagree with me on the “mommy card” point (and I fully expect someone to do so), so don ‘t get too hung up on whether you agree with me that it is sexist. What I really want you to remember is that sometimes the research is wrong. Or more accurately, it is right, but you still shouldn’t do it.

This is particularly true when marketing to moms. Just calling a product “for moms” doesn’t make it so.

Be very careful about playing the mommy card.

 

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Coming attractions…

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I’m in the final days of the first draft of Professional Blogging for Dummies so no time to post until next week. Here’s what you can look forward to on Marketing Roadmaps when I come back:

Douches, snakes and Brand Ambassadors — my take on some topics that have been swirling around Twitter this week. Preview: These bad pitches are proof positive that the blogger outreach webinar we are doing on April 6th is very much needed.

Why (most) PR and ad agencies (still) don’t get social media — Inspired by a post from good friend Todd Defren. I agree with Todd that most ad agencies don’t get it, but, see previous item, don’t believe many PR agencies are any better. I’ll explain why.

And over on my personal blog Snapshot Chronicles, I’ll be posting Mainstream Media versus Woman, my take on the issues underlying stories like the March 14th New York Times feature on mom blogs.

Women are more than mommies: More Women

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crossposted to Snapshot Chronicles

I’m sure it will be a surprise to the mainstream media, but women are more than mommies.

Many women aren’t mommies at all, for a variety of reasons that are their business, not ours. Those of us that are parents don’t define ourselves solely by that role, even if we write a mom blog. And definitely when we do not write a blog about our parenting experiences.  When our blogs are about other things important to us — our jobs, our hobbies, our causes, our politics, our opinions, our rants and our raves.

Our lives. Ourselves.

We find our identity beyond our motherhood. It may encompass it, but women are not simply wombs who walk.

But in the minds of the media  and many marketers, women bloggers are mom bloggers. The consumer products companies reach out to moms. The media companies create opportunities for moms. Moms moms moms.

It’s a perennial frustration for women’s blogging community BlogHer, which works overtime to focus attention on the full spectrum of women’s blogging, but regularly sees the media hone in on the one segment. Mom.

Some — myself included — see this repeated reduction of women to our reproductive status as a form of sexism. Moms are about kids. Men are about the world. Moms aren’t serious.

It’s part of a cultural mentality in which a company can argue that lactation is not a condition of pregnancy, and dismiss an employee for taking unauthorized breaks to pump while allowing smoke and pee breaks. Isotoner/Totes, if you are wondering. That Danielle has a nice summary with links to other posts.

Bullshit.

But, you know, we are more than our reproductive organs. Media, marketers should pay attention. We’ve got disposable income. Even if we are moms, we do not spend every cent on floor wax, juice boxes and school supplies. If we aren’t supporting the Disney and LEGO franchises, we’ve got even more money to spend on stuff.

So, why aren’t companies reaching out to us in greater numbers? Why isn’t the media telling the stories about women entrepreneurs, women bloggers, women philanthropists? Grandmas and grad students. Women doing all sorts of things to make a difference in the world beyond just the genetic material we created or might create.

It’s been a refrain for years at the BlogHer conference. This year, the indomitable Grace Davis decided to do something about it. Something to call attention to More Women (than just moms.)

She’s created an online community called More Women.

Why is this important?

If you are a woman blogger, with or without offspring, check it out. We need to make our voices heard as women, not just as mothers.

If you are a marketer, pay attention. We will be heard, and you might want to be among the first to catch our ear.

Laugh if you will. I know the song is a bit hokey and outdated. But for many of us in Generation Jones, it was large part of our development as women and feminists. More than 30 years later,  I  Am Woman still says we won’t give up.

I am woman, hear me roar. In numbers too big to ignore…

I am woman, hear me speak

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“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?” – Rabbi Hillel

Diversity at business, and especially social media, conferences. Still a concept more than a reality, and quite frankly, it feels like we’ve been pushing this rock uphill forever. This week, Lena West started the ball rolling again over at Lipsticking, and Jeremiah Owyang and Elisa Camahort both joined the fray. And now me.

As we all have before. More times than any of us wishes.

Read their posts. Read the comments. There are so many people speaking eloquently on this subject… again … that I don’t have much to add.

Except the following: VOTE WITH YOUR FEET.

Stop going to conferences that do not embrace diversity. And not just gender. A conference full of white faces, whether they are male or female, does not embrace our population. Online or off.

Tell the organizers why you won’t attend … sponsor … exhibit.

It will not change if we do not stop talking about it and start doing something.

For all these reasons, and many more,  I embraced BlogHer from the beginning and am so proud to be part of that community. Man or woman, I urge you to attend BlogHer Business this April in NYC and BlogHer in San Francisco in July.

One of the sessions I’m part of at BlogHer Business is a panel on "Improve this Pitch." We will be focusing on pitches to bloggers  that are ok but could stand some improvement.  No worries though, we promise to share some really bad pitches for your enjoyment as well. Including the crappiest pitch ever. Really.

I’m also doing a case study with Victoria Naffier from HP and Liz Gumbinner, Mom-101, about the blogger outreach programs for HP Photo Books last fall. 

Another conference I urge you to check out is New Comm Forum in Santa Rosa, California at the end of April. I’ll be moderating the luncheon keynote on the first day, a panel of alumni from the conference coming back to share how they used the knowledge gained at the conference in their organizations. Planning to come to New Comm? Next year, it could be you.

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