On the heels of last week's inaugural feature of Maternal Instinct's Wet Blanket Award, we now highlight a company that markets masterfully to moms, with our first-ever Warm Blanket Award.

And the winner is...

Minute Rice.


This campaign has been running for over a year now and no-wonder why: it's a big idea with a simple premise that can be adapted for seasonality.

The copy writes itself, lifted from the endless to-do lists of moms everywhere: makes kids' lunches, call plumber about garbage disposal, get a haircut, spend 20 minutes on treadmill and so on. During the holidays, I noticed they adapted the copy to include items like untangle Christmas tree lights and sew costumes for holiday pageant. The only shot of color on the page is the box, the URL and the simple promise: We can help.

One of the things I love about this campaign is that the ad agency behind it (Barkley U.S. based out of Kansas City) managed to fly it up the flagpole at all. After years spent sitting in hundreds of concept presentations, I can only imagine the litany of comments a concept like this might inspire:

"Why is the box so small?"

"No one will read all that type."

"But you haven't told them about all the recipes we have online!"

"Shouldn't we tell them we make brown rice, too?"

The Minute Rice people either don't suffer from this myopia (a.k.a. kitchen-sink marketing), or they have stellar account people at Barkley to diffuse such criticism. Possibly both.

The reason this campaign succeeds is that it shows that in the course of a hectic day, one product which can be made in 60 seconds answers a daily need on the list: feed the family. And it does so by showing a keen understanding of women's real, everyday lives, pet hair and all.

Kudos, Minute Rice. Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.

Welcome to a new feature of Maternal Journal. Every month we'll highlight one company whose marketing misses the mark of connecting with moms (according to our What's Your Blanket? litmus test).

So, the first-ever Wet Blanket Award goes to... (drumroll, please)

T-Mobile.



The ad copy reads as follows:

I Take My Family Everywhere I Run.

I hear from them at least once a mile. Luckily T-Mobile proved my signal strength, street by street, before I signed up. Which is important, if I get a crisis call about a missing binkie. When it comes to my coverage, T-Mobile works great.

This ad is a perfect example of a message that got 90% of it right, but ruined the whole thing with one oversight. I can see the creative brief in my mind, stating correctly that moms need to feel reachable by their families, especially when they are going to attempt something as luxuriously "selfish" as exercising. Yet needing to feel reachable, and being tethered to the family's every last need, are two separate things.

"I hear from them at least once a mile" opens the ad copy. You mean to tell me that the caretaker for these children cannot operate without mom's help for seven to ten minutes at a stretch? Dads everywhere should be insulted by this ad (I'm sure the super-capable guys at DadLabs would be stewing about it right now if they weren't too busy single-handedly running the PTA, driving the carpool, and coaching soccer).

She wants to take her family everywhere she runs: YES. But she does not want to hear from them unless there is a real emergency. Do not call these pesky interruptions "crisis calls." This is her coveted "me" time. T-Mobile has taken what could be a huge support for her in this way -- good coverage so she can forget about her family -- and ruined it by suggesting that it will turn her into Mom 911, 24/7, forced into thinking of them every 20 city blocks.

That's it for today. And lest you think Maternal Instinct only scans for the negative, we will also highlight success via the Warm Blanket Award (stay tuned: Award #1 is coming next week).

Labels: DadLabs, mom marketing award, T-Mobile

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.