Mothers of Invention
CALL IT CAUSE MARKETING WITH AN AGENDA: Kimberly-Clark has launched a program to hand out start-up cash to moms with new business ideas, to support homegrown businesses, build ties to its user base and just possibly to turn up new products to sell.
The company, parent to the Huggies diaper brand, rolled out the campaign in May with an open call for submissions at the www.HuggiesMomInspired.com microsite. Until June 9, the company will accept mothers’ ideas for goods or services that will make life with a child 6 or under richer and more rewarding. After that, K-C judges will decide which ideas merit funding based on originality, relevancy and commercial viability and will hand out grants ranging from $1,000 to $15,000, with a promise to give out up to $250,000 this year.
While other CPG companies are looking outside their in-house resources for product ideas, the MomInspired program seems to be the only one that’s tapping directly into the creativity of its core consumers for new products.
Beyond baby bottoms The ideas don’t need to center on diapers or hygiene. “One of the principal things we’re expecting out of the Huggies MomInspired program is a source of ideas and emerging businesses that are beyond what we do today, but would still reconcile themselves with the Huggies brand equity: helping mom and baby resolve the stresses and tension of everyday life,” says Stephen Paljieg, senior director of growth and innovation at K-C. “The brand has permission to go beyond diapering and changing occasions.”
In the process, of course, K-C will also build relations with its core audience by helping develop moms’ entrepreneurship. “Moms are the original problem-solvers,” says Paljieg.
It’s early, but the results so far (completed grants in the “low hundreds,” per Paljieg) are strong enough that K-C is thinking about refinements for the next round of grants — including perhaps overseas expansion. “We think there’s potential to take this elsewhere in the world, where we find the same target-within-a-target of inventive moms.”
