Targeted marketing

Never, in the history of marketing, has a campaign been more aptly targeted.  If you see the post preceding this one you’ll understand why.

I received an e-mail from Mumsnet which included information on their book club.  I clicked on the link and noted it was sponsored by Radox.

This is taken from the campaign microsite landing page:

Why have we called the campaign 'Be Selfish'?

The idea for the Be Selfish campaign actually came from a group of Mums. Back in 2009 we asked our customers (who happened to be Mums), what they would like more of, and the answer was universally 'more time to ourselves please', not because they were unhappy being a Mum, or a wife, or a colleague but because like all of us Mums really benefit from spending time out focussing just on them, you know where you shut the door, and have a bit of peace and quiet, with no interruptions.

However, we also discovered that simply 'taking time out' was easier said than done. We commissioned a survey that found the average British women spent 21 years of her life looking after other people, and only three years on herself; statistics like these highlight the reasons why:

Running errands, looking after the house and shopping for the family took up 19 years, three months, and four days in the average women's lifetime.

• Looking after children and the daily ferrying to after school clubs and swimming lessons accounted for a further one year, nine months and eight days.
• 11 hours were spent cooking for the family each week, equating to almost four years of a women's life spent up close and personal to her cooker.
• Not that Mums were complaining BUT the effects of all this running about were not pretty with 63% of Mums reporting regular 'boiling over' outbursts (normally at the nearest family member).

Radox coined a phrase for these little eruptions - Vesuvius Syndrome - where everyday stresses built up and up to the point where it all boiled over. Radox wanted to help Mums beat this by facilitating 'time out', and so the 'Be Selfish' campaign was born.

Over the last two years we've teamed up with Kathy Lette to write a waterproof book that Mums could read in the bath, we built a Selfish Sanctuary that Mums could win for a bit of selfish pampering - and in October 2010 we teamed up with Mumsnet to sponsor the book club giving away free books to enjoy.

I’m off to pour myself a glass of wine, run a hot bath, and take a book, and not my phone, with me.