Scene from a grocery store: A harried, sweaty woman enters in gym clothes. She has two kids in tow. It is dinner time, and they are hungry. Mom has had a brainstorm: order pizza from her fancy, yuppie grocery store, then run around the store finding free samples of cheese, bread, and pastry to feed the kids while they wait for their “real dinner” to cook.
Sweaty Mom is beating herself up for her inability to fit a home-cooked meal into her day, but her kids seem pretty psyched about the “amuse-bouche” around every corner. While her baby licks fig jelly off her fingers, Sweaty Mom makes several impulse buys that blow her weekly grocery budget out of the water.
She takes the kids to explore the play area for a few minutes, then they pick up their pizza and head home. Sweaty Mom manages to put the leftovers away after dinner, but she leaves the empty box on the kitchen counter until morning. She feels guilty about that, but guilt is such a familiar emotion, she practically welcomes it as she would a friend.
I starred in this scene last night, thinking that this store completely had my number and knew exactly how to grab money out of my wallet. After I put my pizza-stuffed girls to bed, I opened my e-mail to find a timely piece from AdAge on how to market to “The New Female Consumer,” who just happens to be “The Real Mom.”
I had been having some trouble coming up with a topic for today to fit into the Work-From-Home Week theme, then my new best friend Pamela sent me the link to AdAge’s report. Don’t you just love when things work out perfectly at the last minute? [Thanks, Pamela!]
It seems, according to AdAge researchers, that “the Real Mom” is too busy to care about perfection, and in many cases, she is working. She has it all – kids, house, career – and she is very, very tired.
I took AdAge’s 12,000 words on this topic with 12,000 grains of salt. The goal of the paper, after all, is to teach some company how to sell me plusher, more expensive toilet paper. But the writers of this piece did seem to grasp a few key truths that apply to me, and probably to many women who find themselves doing more than one job, whether that refers to motherhood and paid work, motherhood and volunteerism, motherhood and at-home science experimentation, whatever.
Hey, did you know that women today find that they cannot accomplish everything they need to do with absolute perfection, so they are letting some things fall by the wayside, like housework? Of course you do, especially if you have ever read a “mommy blog,” talked to a woman who has kids, or been conscious during your own life. We do what we have to do to carve out time with our kids.
Here’s what else marketers now know about us:
- “The fact is, no matter how progressive they are, women are up against something that just won’t budge: biology. Motherhood will always distinguish most women from men and put them at the center of home and family life. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, many mothers, especially working mothers, are time-crunched and stressed, putting in long hours at work and at home.”
- “Increasingly, Gen Xers (ages 30 to 44) and millennials (ages 18 to 29) are not beholden to perfection. Having seen their predecessors exhaust themselves trying to achieve an elusive ideal—the corner office, 2.5 well-groomed children at home and Julia Child’s command of the kitchen—these younger mothers realize that ‘having it all’ does not require doing it all.”
- “In this way, real moms look to subvert the so-called “mommy trap,” where a mother has to choose whether to forfeit a career to care for the kids or plow ahead at work and hand over the stroller reins to the nanny.”
- Real moms understand that tradeoffs are implicit in motherhood; they just don’t see things as black and white.” [like this woman does.]
- “Increasingly, women are showing signs that they are not aspiring to perfection in any arena of their lives.”
Now doesn’t that final statement make you feel proud?
I wonder what marketers will do with this information, whether they will use it for good or evil. What kind of product does one create for the woman who does not aspire to perfection? Toilet bowl cleaner that sort of smells clean? Microwave dinners that are almost nutritious? Or does a savvy marketer take that information and create a shopping experience that combines prepared meals, free samples, a play area, and overpriced impulse items?
I’m not sure. I think I’ll consider it over my $10 brie.
Join me tomorrow for an interview with one of my favorite bloggers, Lindsay from Suburban Turmoil.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
OMG. As a (temporarily) retired copywriter married to an ad account exec, I am laughing. I will be sure to pass this along to my fellow advertising mommy friends. I am sure, just positive, that this article was written by a man, after reading hours of focus group testing from which he culled the absolutely wrong information.
Sigh. Can I have some of that brie?
I’m curious to see if Gibby’s friends will say. Because I fear you’re right, they may just make half-ass stuff and assume will by it because we can’t achieve perfection. But on the other hand, maybe someone will come up with something we need and deserve. Like my grandma’s generation gained the well-deserved dishwasher. And my mom’s generation gained the well-deserved microwave. What well-deserved thing will we get? *look dreamily into the sky*
Too funny. I was a copywriter in a former life and I used to live by AdAge and Adweek. You brought back many memories.
You’re also quite timely. Mommy guilt has been hitting hard these days, so this really helped. Thanks.