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Online Moms in 2013 – Mobile, Influential, and Crucial to Brand Marketing

mother laptopResearch has shown again and again that women make or influence the vast majority of purchase decisions, and mothers who spend time online have become a coveted target audience that brand marketers are trying hard than ever to reach. However, messages and campaigns are still missing the mark.

New research from Burst Media reveals that the powerful “online moms” audience is more savvy and decisive than ever. Citing statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, Burst Media reports that 40% of all U.S. households with children under the age of 18 are led by mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income for the entire family.

Furthermore, Baby Center has reported that 81% of U.S. moms own smartphones and 52% own tablets with 68% of them using their smartphones while they shop. In other words, the “mother” market segment has evolved over the years, and old marketing tactics need to evolve along with the target audience.

Burst Media shared a number of key findings from its research that can help brand marketers better understand how the audience of online mothers is using the internet to make and influence purchase decisions. Some of the highlights are included below. Follow the link above to access the full report.

Usage

  • 91.9% of moms go online daily for personal use.

Mobility

  • 61.5% of U.S. moms frequently use smartphones or tablets to access websites and social networks.
  • 87.6% of mothers with household incomes of $100,000 or more frequently use smartphones or tablets to access websites and social networks.

Brands

  • 43.5% of moms have published a review, comment, or question about a specific brand online.
  • 60.8% of moms who have published a review about a brand online, published those reviews on social networking sites, including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest.
  • Moms are most likely to publish reviews, questions, or comments on social networks (62.2%) followed by shopping/retail sites (55.9%) and blogs/independent sites (32.4%).
  • 56.1% of moms share or post product coupons and sales incentives on social media sites.

Purchase Decisions

Moms are “very involved” in most household purchase decisions. For example, they make or influence purchase decisions as follows:

  • Furniture = 83%
  • Travel and family vacations = 81.9%
  • Large household appliances = 80%
  • Home repairs and remodeling = 79.1%
  • Banking, financial, and retirement products = 77.1%
  • Automobiles and auto repairs = 75.8%

Moms are also turning to the web to make purchase decisions in greater numbers than ever. When asked their primary information source for researching products and services, the results broke down as follows:

  1. Web = 41%
  2. Friends and family = 19.4%
  3. Brochures and product materials = 15.1%
  4. Social networks such as Facebook and Pinterest = 4.6%
  5. In-store displays = 4.1%
  6. Magazines = 3.9%
  7. Television shows = 3.5%
  8. Newspapers = 2.3%

Based on the results from this study, are you targeting online moms appropriately? Do your messages, social media activities, and content distribution strategies match what online moms are looking for and where they’re looking for it in 2013? Leave a comment and share your thoughts about marketing to online moms.

Image: Alicja Stolarczyk

U.S. Department of the Interior Turns to Crowdsourcing for New Logo Design

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of the Interior published a call for new logo design entries on CrowdSpring.com, a crowdsourcing site for logo design, web design, and writing. The current logo (referred to as a ‘seal’)  for the U.S. Department of the Interior (shown with this post) is nearly 100 years old and features what could easily be mistaken as a clip art buffalo. This is a logo redesign that is long overdue.

However, the existing seal won’t disappear. Instead, the new logo will be used with the existing seal. The main purpose for the new logo is for use on hats, T-shirts, jackets, and so on. The existing seal is complex and as any production person will tell you, not conducive to economic printing. Unfortunately, this is a mistake that companies still make today.

The U.S. Department of the Interior Logo Design project was posted and opened for entries on the CrowdSPRING website on June 1, 2011. The call for entries offered the following guidance:

“We’re looking for a logo that is both elegant (simple) and meaningful. DOI is a cabinet-level agency with responsibility for land management, energy production, conservation, and more. The design must appeal to both our internal and external audiences. More specifically, the logo must appeal to the 70,000 employees of Interior, as well as (in alphabetical order) cattlemen/ranchers, coal miners, conservationists, farmers, fishermen, historians, hunters, Native Americans & tribal entities, offshore oil and gas producers, recreation enthusiasts (boaters, hikers, campers) and others. We recognize that this is a lengthy list and include it for a sense of the breadth and scale of our missions.”

The call for entries cited the top 3 things the logo should convey as:

  • Stewardship of the land
  • Conservation of our natural resources
  • Goodness of purpose

That’s a tall order. The call for entries closed on June 15, 2011. A total of 617 logo entries were submitted, and a final decision has not yet been announced. The designer of the selected logo will receive $1,000 and the top two runners up will each receive $250.

Crowdsourcing is a great way to keep costs down and involve a larger audience in a company’s (or government agency’s) initiatives. And of course, risk is reduced because there isn’t a significant upfront investment. If the ‘right’ logo design doesn’t come from the crowdsourcing effort, it’s easy to pick up the pieces and try again. No one wants a repeat of The Gap’s logo fiasco of 2010.

What do you think of crowdsourcing logo design? Love it or hate it? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Gap’s Made in USA Mistake Offers Lesson to Learn From

gap-feed-bags-chinaRetailer Gap offers another example this year that marketers can learn from.  Earlier this year, Gap suffered from negative backlash after releasing a lackluster logo and reverting to the old logo a week later.  This month, the brand is in the news again related to its holiday social responsibility efforts.

In support of the anti-hunger FEED Projects charity, Gap is selling limited edition bags imprinted with “FEED” along with promotional materials that hype the “Made in the USA” message.  For each bag purchased by a consumer, Gap will donate $5 to U.S. school lunch programs.

Sounds like a great way to help a charity, right?  Well, there is a problem with Gap’s promotional efforts.  Despite the “Made in the USA” promotional materials, the bags were made in China — a fact that is evident on a tag which is sewn into the bags and says two things on it — “Gap” and “Made in China.”  You can see larger pictures of the bag with the Made in China tag and promotional materials here.

This is a mistake that was certainly unintentional but unfortunately, puts Gap in the middle of negative conversations across the social web for the second time in the same year.  It’s a lesson that all marketers can learn from.  Make sure all aspects of your marketing campaigns accurately reflect your brand message, image, and promise.

Gap did issue an apology (read it on BrandChannel where the story broke) and pulled the bags from the campaign, but it demonstrates how quickly information can spread across the Internet (check out the post and survey about it on The Huffington Post) and how careful companies have to be when it comes to every aspect of their marketing campaigns.  Well-known brands are held up to high levels of scrutiny, particularly when charities and cause marketing are connected to those brands.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

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AT&T Embraces Emotional Branding in Ad Campaign

at&t wireless iphoneWho said a telecommunications brand can’t pique consumers’ emotions? AT&T proved that it could successfully tap into consumers’ emotions decades ago with its “Reach out and touch someone” campaigns. While the brand has lost some of its emotional connection to consumers in recent years, the marketing team has been trying to turn that around over the past 12 months with an ad campaign that is laser-focused on emotional branding.

John McDermott of Advertising Age reports that the AT&T “It’s Not Complicated” campaign, which features first graders discussing AT&T’s mobile service with an adult, has been very successful in emotionally connecting consumers to the AT&T brand. Both consumers and AT&T employees (the brand’s most powerful advocates) are reacting positively to the campaign.

You can watch one of the commercials in the campaign below.


This is good news for AT&T, a brand known for wireless coverage in the United States that is significantly inferior to the market leader, Verizon Wireless. McDermott reports that AT&T isn’t focusing on its competitors in its marketing strategy but rather the company is planning to extend its wireless offerings in the future. The question at this point is whether building an emotional connection through an ad campaign will work in the long-term if AT&T can’t back up the feelings its ads evoke with products that deliver on consumer demands.

Google succeeded in its attempt to build an emotional connection between consumers and its brand with its 2011 Google Chrome ad campaign and again with its 2012 Google Zeitgest video. However, Google was able to meet consumers’ expectations for its brand, so the emotional connection was a significant enhancement to the brand’s existing value.

Years ago, I worked for AT&T, and at the time, I was proud to be an AT&T employee. It was my first marketing job out of college, and I still have an AT&T paperclip holder sitting on my desk as I type this article. I have hope for the AT&T brand. Step one — set consumer expectations and consistently meet those expectations. An emotional connection will develop organically, which can be fostered through emotional advertising. Only time will tell what the rumored AT&T wireless brand extensions will be and whether or not they’ll be enough to make consumers believe in the AT&T brand again.

What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts below.

Image: Robert S. Donovan

2011 Logo Design Trends

Each year, the team at LogoLounge.com puts together a logo design trend report. The 2011 logo trends were released this week, and it appears we’re in for more of the same in terms of color, circles, and bursts. In fact, most of the trends for the current year are disappointingly unexciting.

The report includes a variety of design trends. I pulled several of the most interesting trends from the report. They are:

  • Retro-chic: The Web 2.0 look is fading in popularity as many brands (such as the Google Chrome logo pictured above) return to the 2-dimensional logo design that worked in the past.
  • Skinny is in: Thin lines in design and type are all the rage in 2011.
  • Gradients: Having worked for a company with a gradient in its logo in the past, this is a design I strongly dislike, but alas, it’s in for 2011.
  • Cartoons: Cute, cartoon-like illustrations are being used more and more in logo designs.
  • Brown: There was a time when brown was a very unpopular color for logos and brand color palettes, but that’s not the case this year.

It seems like we’re in a slump as far as brand identity and logo design creativity are concerned. Companies appear to be afraid to go against the status quo and designers are surely frustrated. It’s hard to curb the creative spirit!

Of course, the ultimate test of a good logo is whether or not it works in black and white. If your logo doesn’t pass the one-color test, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

And here’s a final thought — in January 2010, I wrote a post here on the Corporate Eye blog about the Brand New blog’s most relevant brand identity work of the decade (2000-2009) wrap-up. Follow the preceding link and take a moment and scroll through that wrap-up.  Then compare what you read to the 2011 logo design trends. You’d be surprised to learn how much logo design really hasn’t changed. There are some recent logos that stand out as particularly innovative, appropriate, and effective, but most use more of the same tried-and-true techniques that have been used for decades.

What do you think? Are companies afraid to take their logo designs too far outside the box? Leave a comment and share your opinion.

Iconic Brands Embrace Simpler Logo Designs to Attract Everyone, Everywhere

world mapIn recent years, we’ve seen an ongoing trend in logo design where the overly-stylized Web 2.0 trend has been replaced with a back-to-basics trend—simpler logos without all the bells and whistles. At the same time, many iconic brands have stripped down their logos with some reverting to simple wordmark logo designs.

Now, Visa and Black & Decker have jumped on the ‘simple is better’ logo design trend. Both launched new logo designs this month with the hope of repositioning their brands to appeal to wider audiences.

VISA Rebranding

In a Visa blog post, CEO Charles Scharf writes,

For Visa to be successful, their simple aspiration: ‘to be the best way to pay and be paid’ needs to drive everything and everyone at Visa. Half a century later, we added three words to our goal: ‘for everyone, everywhere’.

Visa’s chief brand officer, Antonio Lucio, explains in a press release,

The new platform is compelling because it encompasses strengths of Visa, past, present and future,” continued Lucio. “‘Everywhere’ includes the tens of millions of merchant locations that accept Visa today. It’s also the new ways and places people want to pay, including mobile and e-commerce. ‘Everywhere’ is also a celebration of everyone’s aspirations, from an athlete achieving her Olympic dream to a single mother accessing her first bank account on a Visa card.

Take a look at the old and new logos below.

VISA logo old and new

A few brand positioning themes are clear based on the comments from the Visa CEO and chief brand officer. Visa wants to focus on its history to build trust with broader audiences. Black & Decker wants to achieve similar branding goals with its recent rebranding effort.

Black & Decker Rebranding

According to the Black & Decker case study by Lippincott,

We outlined clear — and demanding — objectives for the brand strategy and design: the brand would need to be fundamentally human, to reflect BLACK + DECKER’s ability to transform a daunting task into a feeling of accomplishment. It would need to be simple, evoking a past and future of intuitive, human-centric design, while still being meaningfully different and modern. The strategic goal of the new positioning and visual identity was to represent the vast array of products that BLACK + DECKER offers from power tools, cleaning supplies, garden tools, outdoor needs and small domestic appliances. The logo aims to strike the perfect balance between all of the brands’ categories: it maintains the signature masculine, orange black palette for power tools and outdoor products, but receives a softer and more elegant treatment for products used inside the home using a white and grey color palette. The uppercase, stacked type is technical and sharp, the round edges of the holding shape are soft and flexible.

Again, some common themes resonate—simplicity, appealing to broader audiences, and integrating the brand’s history into the new brand identity and logo design.

You can see the old and new Black & Decker logos below:

Black and Decker logo old new

Take a look at the before and after logo designs for both brands above. What do you think?

Image: Flavio Takemoto