Jul 22 2010
Mothercare Group, the UK’s largest provider of baby and parenting products, has appointed Diffusion to an integrated brief to help develop the social media strategy for its iconic Mothercare and Early Learning Centre retail brands. Diffusion has also been tasked to raise national awareness for Mothercare’s social networking site for new parents, Gurgle.com, through a high-impact campaign targeting young parents via mainstream print and broadcast media.
Mothers and young parents are an increasingly active group online, placing a huge amount of value on the opinions, advice and recommendations of their peers. Figures from comScore reveal that over 4.6 million mothers in the UK go online every month, spending over 26 hours surfing the web with a high focus on retail sites. Diffusion will be working with Mothercare and Early Learning Centre to develop an online engagement strategy based on actively listening to perceptions of the brand and its products online and then increasing participation on key parenting blogs, forums and social networking sites.
Key objectives will be to use social media to emphasise Mothercare’s expertise and heritage in the baby and parenting space, as well as promote key products and offers to drive both footfall on the High Street and sales via the brands’ ecommerce sites.
Diffusion’s issues-based PR campaign for Gurgle.com will seek to make it a destination site for expectant and recent mothers looking for advice from both resident experts as well as the site’s extensive community of mothers. Core to the campaign will be to increase Gurgle’s profile in national and lifestyle press, positioning Nifa McLaughlin, editor of Gurgle.com as a recognisable media spokesperson on key social, lifestyle and health issues effecting new parents.
Brian Curran, Head of Group Direct Marketing for Mothercare commented, “Mothercare and the Early Learning Centre are brands which over many decades have built very strong reputations for quality, safety and innovation. We recognise that today reputations are increasingly being shaped through online channels, and this is particularly true given the explosion we’ve seen in parenting forums and blogs in recent years and through our own site Gurgle.com. We will be using Diffusion’s digital integration expertise to develop a social media approach which will allow us to enhance and safeguard our online reputation and increase our ability to listen to our consumers to deliver even better products and customer service in the future.”
Ivan Ristic, director and co-founder, Diffusion commented: “The UK’s online community of parents is growing in both size and influence and is understandably becoming a major consideration for retail brands looking to reach UK mothers who control household budgets. Developing relationships with key online influencers and working with Mothercare’s brands to make it an active and valued part of these online communities will be central to our strategic approach. Gurgle.com in particular provides a very active and vibrant platform for new mothers, which we will look to build through a proactive media relations campaign that brings a fresh and informed perspective.”
