by Maureen Higgins

Late spring brings two of marketer’s favorite holidays—Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Meant to celebrate those who gave us life, brands promote sales, products, and tug at our heartstrings to convince us that the latest gadget will prove our love to mom and dad.

How do marketers treat the two holidays differently in their advertising? First we need to think about how consumers demand information about the two holidays differently. See Google Trends below—the blue line represents Google Search queries for Mother’s Day last year—peaking much higher than Father’s Day queries (in red) a few weeks later.

Are moms valued more than dads? Or is it just that consumers feel more pressure to find just the right, most thoughtful gift for mom, while dads are easier (ties anyone?).

Here at Why Moms Rule, we wanted to take a look at how a variety of brands approach Mother’s Day marketing versus Father’s Day. It’s probably not what you’d think.

Read More to see the spots.

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BOHAN partnered with Ipsos Public Affairs on a survey about how Americans view their first names. Check out the story in USA TODAY: http://ow.ly/kU5a5 and view our infographic showcasing our research below the fold.

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Moms take the lead in planning family vacations, and we at Why Moms Rule are always interested in how travel businesses approach marketing. 

WMR contributor Annabel Kelly of AKK Research, recently attended a Q&A with Steve Hafner.  

Steve was a founder of Orbitz, sold it for $1.25billion and two weeks later created KAYAK.  The travel site recently announced its acquisition by Priceline for $1.8billion!  The event focused on the story of KAYAK and was hosted by the Stamford Innovation Center in Connecticut. 

Top takeaways from Steve:

—Invest in branding from the get-go.  KAYAK spent 25% of its initial capital money to find the right name, much to the chagrin of their VC backers

—Work with the best:  You can control media spend and placement, but you’ve got to have the right creative team working on your campaign to get results 

—Spend on digital:  KAYAK bids on around three million ad words in 15 countries at a cost of $85million

—ROI is still a challenge for offline marketing:  Steve estimates a 50% hit rate when it comes to his offline marketing. He admits there is huge waste and it is difficult to accurately report ROI.

More from the event:

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By Hollie Rapello

After I shared my experience of ‘rebranding’ my one-year-old son with my BOHAN workmates, we embarked on a little research to find out what Americans really think about their names. Our “What Did You Call Me?” research study was conducted by AKK Research and Ipsos Public Affairs and revealed many insights into what works and what doesn’t when it comes to names.

From a marketing perspective, we found that a good brand name and a good baby name can have more in common than you might think. Many of these “Ten Naming Wins” looked familiar to us from our experience recommending brand names to clients. For example, different can be good, but only to a point. Take the brand name “Apple” for example—definitely unique, but short and easy to spell—all attributes that made it to our “Ten Naming Wins” list. Maybe Gwyneth isn’t so crazy after all?

Choose something different (especially for girls) … 

We like to be unique! It’s the number one reason Americans gave for why they like or love their names. And women were almost twice as likely as men to say they like or love having a name because it’s uncommon. 

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By Hollie Rapello

It was a very personal and public branding ‘oops’! 

After 15 years in the advertising business working with some of the most well known global brands, I goofed on the biggest branding assignment of my life:  the naming of my son.  Mind you I had plenty of time to do the necessary research, spending the last two months of my pregnancy on bed rest with nothing better to do than research names and read the Twilight series, which by the way was the most embarrassing purchase of my husband’s life “I’d rather have been sent in for a jumbo box of tampons than stand in line with those books!” (the notion of buying books at a bookstore now seems quaint, huh?)

Oh, the endless considerations:  is it better to have a more search optimized name like “Ivan Wicksteed” (yes he does exist and is the newest CMO at Old Navy) or a more anonymous “Joe Smith” online existence? Is the name easy to spell? Does it have global transference (in the UK, John Thomas is slang for male genitalia for instance)?  Is it too common—will he be one of five in his class?  Does it pay homage to his family heritage?

And yes, I had consultants on the branding case as well.  One of my closest friends was a researcher for IPSOS and felt my name choice was “classic.”  Another friend surveyed from a different area of the country thought it was “timeless.”  

However, once my son was born and wore his new name for a few months, my husband and I started to second-guess our name choice.  It just wasn’t right for him!

Well, it turns out, we weren’t alone. 

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By Hollie Rapello

This weekend I attended the Mom 2.0 conference, where influential bloggers, entrepreneurs and brands converged “to discuss ideas and forecast what’s next for women online and in the marketplace,” according the organizers. It was my first time to go … and it was an experience. I met creative, talented, hard working writers and entrepreneurs. I met producers from the HLN Network and The Today Show. I met brand marketers and a handful of PR professionals, consultants and social marketing entrepreneurs. I met Rob Candelino, VP of marketing (for all of Unilever skin care brands). But guess whom I didn’t meet? Not a single ad agency executive! Really?!

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By: David Bohan

Several recent studies have applauded men for picking up some of the family shopping duties.

Nielsen reported that between 2004 and 2012, men increased their visits to retail stores, except for grocery stores and drugstores.

The only retail category where men outnumber women is the gas/convenience store category, where men make 57 percent of the shopping trips.

Men’s presence at warehouse stores is increasing, but they still represent only 39 percent of the trips, and while more men are helping with grocery shopping, they account for only 37 percent of those shopping trips.

Women dominate for mass merchandisers, dollar stores, super centers and drug stores, accounting for seven of every 10 shoppers.

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