Building Retail Relationships with Moms, the Blogging Way
There is no denying the power of blogs today. Even though the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that some 62% of Americans still don’t know what a blog is, the early adopters are wielding some influence.
Retailers who aren’t yet up to speed (either in being able to keep track of what’s being said about them and/or, where appropriate, in creating a blog of their own) may be running scared from this feeling of overwhelming vulnerability to word-of-mouse, but there is another way.
Enter Design Public’s “Baby Blogapalooza.”
This is a story of how seven, all single/no kids owners and employees of the San Francisco-based modern furniture/home accessories retailer lassoed the power of the blog (which they originally launched just a few months ago) to inspire online conversations about design for kids and babies.
And, yes – the conversations were among both parents, not just the moms (see my recent post: men are relevant to marketing to women). Women make the bulk of purchases for these sorts of products but the topic of design and kids interests parents, in general (of course). But I digress…
The specific Baby Blogapalooza push was developed for the early August weeks as a grassroots/low budget way to launch two new categories for Design Public. But, it has became so much more.
Co-founder/CEO Drew Sanocki described it this way:
“I asked the top, top mommy and daddy blogs out there to participate alongside all of our designers, both groups sending me posts about their experiences with design, decorating, and children. Everyone came through in a big way. We have almost every blog on board that the New York Times highlighted in a recent article on the parenting blog phenomenon; And, these sites attract huge traffic — some netting up to 40,000 visitors a day — so we expected, and have seen, a massive jump in our traffic (About 5 times normal over the first week we were doing it). And, our email opt-ins are going through the roof, building a permission asset that will serve us well going forward.”
Now those are some numbers! But, even more – Drew says the content has been hilarious and that customers and regular visitors love it. The way he sees it, Design Public – as a small, lean company – can and must open their doors in this way. They have chosen to hand the steering wheel to their customers and visitors, and so are generating brand loyalty, and “going from conception to two-new-categories-and-a-viral-marketing-Perfect-Storm in just two months.”
Meanwhile one of the larger companies in the modern design realm, Design Within Reach , has been planning DWR Kids for a year or so, and will be launching this fall . While DWR may well see great success with that launch, Design Public has beaten them to the punch both with their in-a-flash timeline, and in the level of authenticity generated within and around the brand by way of the Baby Blogapalooza community; which may be very difficult to recreate. It will be fun to watch.
A side note: For those of you interested in design, in general - Joy Panos Stauber of Stauber Design Studio in Chicago has launched Design-ish . She defines Design-ish as “
a verb that describes the work that happens before tangible artifacts (like brochures or websites) are in hand,” or “the dialog, discovery, sifting, collaborating, evaluating, and editing that lead you to the right communications strategy and positioning, and then on to specific applications.”
Since design is a great personal passion of mine (which most of you have figured out by now), I am excited to be an occasional Design-ish contributor myself. I started with my just posted piece on Curated Relevance .
