Sharing is always good!

Another interesting article from the New York Times and contributor Andrew Adam Newman. Although it focuses on Procter & Gamble marketing Pampers to dads on a more overt basis, it included a couple topics I find somewhat noteworthy that aren’t direct topics of the piece.

First topic: Companies focusing on of-the-moment things like, oh, I don’t know…fathers on father’s day. (on a side note: I remember when my soup was du jour, now the world has gotten so fast it is of-the-moment) Will I change my purchase pattern because I feel like an actual, honest-to-God parent for one day (and in some cases — jumping gee willikers — a whole month!) because I get an email and an opportunity to win some prizes from a mega-company? No. Why? Because marketing — especially short term, get what you can marketing — won’t move me away from a product that I like better due to the product itself.

Second Topic: Find a topic and I will find survey results supporting the topic’s position as well as survey results refuting the topic’s position. From the article: “In a recent survey of parents by Pampers, 69 percent of men responded that they changed diapers as often their wives, while 11 percent said they did so even more often. Although men’s perceptions differ from women’s (only 31 percent of mothers said fathers split diaper duties equally, and just 4 percent said fathers did more), the findings are consistent with other reports about men’s growing involvement in the home.” Hmm, could it be that dads who want to make it known they do more were more apt to respond like the moms that aren’t getting any support? Is anyone as quick to compliment on quality service as they are to complain on sub-par service? Surveys — like the use of percentages without the hard numbers — can be very misleading.

Kudos to Greg Allen over at Daddy Types and Brian Reid at Rebel Dad for getting their input included in the article. Make sure to check these guys out — they got some great stuff and some ideas very much in line with this post and some others (make sure, at the least, to read the posts on Pampers — which I found especially amusing). Usually these articles include a prepared statement quote from a PR expert from the agency handling Procter & Gamble about Pampers hitting the nail on the head and being on the cutting edge of talking to dads. Of course that quote never mentions that the cutting edge dulls as of July 1…

Sharing is always good!