More WOMA Stating the Obvious…

Posted on December 27, 2006
Filed Under Innovation, Marketing |

Puff piece in the NYTimes about a couple of doctors who created some skin care products for kids and generated strong buzz by giving the products away to moms who chatted them up on message boards. I realize that this is a shocking observation, so you should probably sit down and breath deeply.

There is a more subtle conclusion that is unavoidable in all these stories, which is that women tend to use the web to participate in communities while men use it to conduct a transaction.

The real reason that I am posting this is that it occurred to me while reading this article that there are 2 other significant developments that have enabled businesses like the one profiled in this article to flourish. The first is a reliable online payments system and the second is a cost effective shipping and logistics network in the form of UPS and Fedex. While often overlooked the fact remains that both of these developments have enabled small businesses like MD Moms to not be constrained to being just a local business tied to the physical community they are located in.

Online Chat Is a Grapevine That Yields Precious Fruit - New York Times: Soon after, the founders took their word-of-mouth marketing one step further, giving out products to mothers with the hope that they would mention them on Internet message boards and parenting Web sites. The strategy worked. MD Moms’ products were popping up in online discussions.

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