Word of mom: The kind of publicity money can't buy - Globe and Mail

Published Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011 5:13PM ESTLast updated Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011 6:29PM EST

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Amid the passing throng of strollers and wide-eyed pregnant women at a baby-themed trade show, Erin Brouse is brandishing a handful of colourful eco-diapers and making her pitch.

Her back to a table crammed with product, Ms. Brouse is extolling the virtues of her compost after she started tossing her gDiapers disposable inserts in it.

Then, she moves on to what is perhaps a more pressing selling point to those unaccustomed to baby diapering: Holding up a bright blue cotton diaper-cover and stretching a seam, she says, “This band is a lifesaver: We didn’t have a single blowout.”

Savvy saleswoman? Check. An employee of the diaper company? Nope. Ms. Brouse is a “gMum,” an uber-customer who has signed on with the company to help build the brand. GMums (and Dads) are a 7,000-strong army of enthusiasts.

While she is being compensated with about $20 worth of diapers an hour at Toronto’s Baby Time Show, the Oakville, Ont.-based stay-at-home mom gives the impression she’d be working the floor regardless.

“How often do you get this giddy over a product?” she says later, when explaining her willingness to cheerlead, which extends to fiddling with the gDiaper display in her local baby store and dropping off flyers to a mall’s nursing room. There are no scripts to stick to and gDiapers gently discourages overt proselytizing via Tupperware-style parties.

It’s the kind of marketing that money’s not really paying for, but also the kind that money can’t buy, especially in the case of gDiapers, which only has 18 employees.

Research continues to confirm that moms are the driving force in family purchasing – to the tune of trillions of dollars. What’s more, there’s evidence that children end up loyal to their mother’s favourite brands, too. And with other studies showing that word-of-mouth advice from other moms influences them the most, finding ambassadors like Ms. Brouse is now job No. 1 for many companies, from small newbies like the six-year-old, gDiaper to megabrands such as Mattel and General Electric.

Marketing professor Ayalla Ruvio says the gDiaper model is built from the bottom up and is very hard to replicate.

“This will be a turning point in marketing over the next few years,” says Prof. Ruvio, of the Fox School of Business at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she focuses on the connection between emotions and marketing.

Whole industries have grown up to help ingratiate companies to groups of moms, especially the mom-blogger demographic. New books by marketing experts have titles like Tuning into Mom: Understanding America’s Most Powerful Consumer and Power Moms: The New Rules for Engaging Mom Influencers Who Drive Brand Choice.

Cora Brady and Kathryn Easter are the Toronto-based founders of Mom Central Canada, a marketing consulting company that has been connecting brands with mom-bloggers and other mom “influencers” for three years. They’ve worked with brands like Mattel and Fisher-Price to recruit brand ambassadors and to participate in programs such as the Kinder Mom campaign with Kinder Surprise eggs.

Their latest research has found that more than 90 per cent of moms trust the advice of other mothers on product referrals – much more than TV commercials, branded Facebook pages and the like. The goal is to have mom advice pop up first in online searches.

“It’s all about getting the moms doing the talking for you,” says Ms. Brady of how she frames the situation for clients. “It’s all about how are you engaging people and giving them experiences and starting interesting conversations.”

And while companies are grappling with how to quantify the success of these strategies, they know it has to be part of their overall advertising and marketing plan.

“The challenge here is not the money spent, per se,” says Prof. Ruvio. “It has to come from the heart.”

By the way, if these same passionate customers hate your brand? “You’re dead,” she says.

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