Mi Vida as a Planner

Like most families, we passionately watched many of the Olympic events and cheered on our favorite athletes. Now that the Olympics have ended, I’ve had some time to digest it all as a marketer for big brand names and as a mom to an athlete “in the making.”   So not only was I glued to the competitions, I was also very attuned to the ads.   Not only were Phelps, Bolt and Simone Biles the biggest winners in their sport, they were also the biggest winners in the endorsement/advertising world. As a marketer I understand why brands sponsor these elite athletes – the crème of the crop, if you will - they have fame, name recognition, they’re cool, and they have the makings of a great story - humble beginnings, hardships, and wild success due to hard work and perseverance. Brands want a piece of that because they know that these types of stories serve to inspire people and by buying the brand, consumers get to feel a little bit of that magic. The thing is, it seems like n...

Not too long ago I attended some automotive focus groups, and one of the respondents said, “I don’t ever want to drive a mom car.” She was, of course referring to a mini-van and the lifestyle that goes with it…a soccer mom, if you will.   She was probably visualizing a hurried mom, wearing sweat pants, loading sports gear into her car, chauffeuring a million kids, including a screaming toddler, food crumbs all over the place, and mom frantically driving from place to place taking her kids to different activities….whoosh, just typing that made me all frenzy! This got me thinking, at what point, did soccer mom turn into such a negative thing, and who made it so?   The respondent from the focus group didn’t have kids but was planning a family soon.   She had adopted the negative soccer mom image and was turned off by it. In my mind I was thinking, just wait until you have kids and then you can make up your mind, especially about the car you’ll need, because having ki...