Coolhouse Update. I finally did get in touch with the PR folks for Febreze, which is running the moms-only sweepstakes for "cool moms." Here is the logic, as described to me:
1) Marketing research suggests that Febreze appeals to a certain subset of the household-product-buying community (the "cool moms" subset, apparently. Uncool moms, stay away).
2) The promotion was built with that community in mind.
3) The lawyers said that you can't promote a sweepstakes to that community (moms) and then let dads enter. That would apparently make it "misleading." So in the interest of orienting a promotion toward "mominating" cool moms, dads had to be excluded.
The legal part of this makes zero sense to me, and appears a pretty off-the-wall defense of exclusion as a policy. But everything else seems straightforward: they have a target audience that market research suggests is key to their financial success, and if you're not a part of it, Procter & Gamble has no problem ignoring you. Though I was impressed that they called back and explained all this, I'm still boycotting Febreze. And until I see some more progressive marketing from them, I'll make a good faith effort to avoid all P&G products. (No Pampers, no Pringles, and once I burn through the rest of my Mach3 blades, I'll move to Schick.)
This isn't a move designed to bring a Dow Jones Industrial Average member to its knees. P&G has revenues of about One Hundred Million Gazallion Dollars a year, so this is about principle. Honestly, it doesn't take much to make me happy ...
On the flip side, good things happen when you engage fathers as consumers. Though we don't make up a huge percentage of the shoppers, we tend to be passionate about the products we do buy -- we're often mavens. What happens when we're engaged? We write brilliant, thoughtful analyses of the stroller market for Slate (go Greg!). We pen glowing reviews of the hippest minivans in the New York Times. Imagine if Bugaboo or Mazda had driven men away from their products?
1) Marketing research suggests that Febreze appeals to a certain subset of the household-product-buying community (the "cool moms" subset, apparently. Uncool moms, stay away).
2) The promotion was built with that community in mind.
3) The lawyers said that you can't promote a sweepstakes to that community (moms) and then let dads enter. That would apparently make it "misleading." So in the interest of orienting a promotion toward "mominating" cool moms, dads had to be excluded.
The legal part of this makes zero sense to me, and appears a pretty off-the-wall defense of exclusion as a policy. But everything else seems straightforward: they have a target audience that market research suggests is key to their financial success, and if you're not a part of it, Procter & Gamble has no problem ignoring you. Though I was impressed that they called back and explained all this, I'm still boycotting Febreze. And until I see some more progressive marketing from them, I'll make a good faith effort to avoid all P&G products. (No Pampers, no Pringles, and once I burn through the rest of my Mach3 blades, I'll move to Schick.)
This isn't a move designed to bring a Dow Jones Industrial Average member to its knees. P&G has revenues of about One Hundred Million Gazallion Dollars a year, so this is about principle. Honestly, it doesn't take much to make me happy ...
On the flip side, good things happen when you engage fathers as consumers. Though we don't make up a huge percentage of the shoppers, we tend to be passionate about the products we do buy -- we're often mavens. What happens when we're engaged? We write brilliant, thoughtful analyses of the stroller market for Slate (go Greg!). We pen glowing reviews of the hippest minivans in the New York Times. Imagine if Bugaboo or Mazda had driven men away from their products?
posted by Rebel Dad at
5:42 AM
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