Forget sticky marketing; Clorox is going with icky marketing in its latest effort to get moms to laugh.

As announced in a press release Wednesday, the brand is partnering with Carol Leifer, an award-winning comedian and comedy TV writer (Seinfeld, Modern Family), to launch the Clorox Ick-tionary, a wiki-style dictionary of everyday ick that parents and caregivers contend with on a daily basis.

As Leifer observes in a blog post, "Don't ask, don't smell... Because as I’ve learned from my comedy writing on sitcoms, real life always does seem to present the funniest ideas."Continue reading...

P&G has released an exclusive music video starring Jewel, who's the brand ambassador for Pampers, and her toddler.

The song, "The Green Grass Grows All Around," is taken from her 2011 children's album, "The Merry Goes 'Round." According to Pampers, the song pays "homage to the beautiful morning moments shared between parents and their babies. From storytime and sing-alongs to feeding horses and spending time with daddy, the video captures Jewel's favorite beautiful morning moments with her son, Kase."

Check it out below, along with a recording of the brand's recent Facebook chat with the American singer/songwriter:Continue reading...

Procter & Gamble and other diaper-makers may be cheering the news that Kimberly-Clark is abandoning Europe with its diaper business. But the move by the American giant, also maker of Kleenex and other paper products, also will land yet another blow to the fragile economy. Kimberly-Clark confirmed in its latest earnings release that it plans to eliminate up to 1,500 European jobs with the move and its broader restructuring plan in Europe, or about 2.6 percent of its global workforce.

The way CEO Tom Falk put it, the company didn't have any choice after banging its head against a wall in Europe for its disposable diapers. P&G controls 44 percent of the market with Pampers, while Kimberly-Clark's Huggies brand had garnered only a 12-percent share over more than two decades in the market. Private-label diaper brands combined have a bigger share than Huggies.Continue reading...

General Mills and Kellogg have been ruling the cold-cereal market for an eternity. Those two behemoths now own about 60 percent of a $9 billion U.S. market, but that doesn’t mean other companies aren’t finding some success cutting into their market. 

One in particular, the 93-year-old MOM Brands Co., which was recently renamed from Malt-O-Meal, is producing such cereals as Tootie Fruities and Honey Nut Scooters, which bear more than a passing resemblance to Froot Loops and Honey Nut Cheerios.Continue reading...

With such brands as Tide, Charmin, and Bounty in its massive brand family of consumer packaged goods, Procter & Gamble has long focused its marketing push toward the mothers of the world. Even now, in a world where the stay-at-home-dad population is growing and U.S. women are heading toward out-earning their husbands, P&G still pays tribute to mom in much of its marketing.

Its current global campaign, called "Thank You Mom," celebrates the mothers of Olympic athletes, and P&G will take some of those women to the Games in London this summer. While we can all agree that moms rock, P&G is smartly taking a break so it can focus on dads, even for a bit. With Father’s Day coming up this weekend, P&G’s Gillette brand launched dad-centric TV ads during the England-France Euro 2012 tie game on Monday.

Gillette's pre-Father's Day U.S. campaign pitch for the spot at top:

Gillette is searching for the greatest fatherly advice ever. Visit us on Facebook, or use #HeresToDad on Twitter between June 7 and 17 to share your dad's words of wisdom. This commercial celebrates Dads everywhere, by recognizing the man behind the athlete...the man behind all of us. "Here's to Dad. The Best a Man Can Get."Continue reading...

There are reportedly 4 million mom bloggers in the U.S. — passionate, increasingly influential women constantly communicating through social media.

BlogHer co-founder and COO Elisa Camahort Page, whose website draws 37 million unique visitors monthly, advises marketers to identify "focused mom blogs that share your passion—food, pets, child care, fitness, tech, whatever."  One caveat, she adds: "Mom bloggers are ruthless. The Silicon Valley adage, ‘Release early, fix later,' won't fly with moms. They have no patience for beta products or websites, and they don't give out second chances."

But they are one of the golden cohort sweet spots, and Mother’s Day is one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions of the year. Celebrations of motherhood date back to ancient festivals such as the Christian Mothering Sunday, the Roman festival of Hilaria, and the Greek cult to Cybele, but the modern U.S. holiday dates back to 1908 and Anna Jarvis’s memorial for her mother.Continue reading...

Most authors are content to toil away on their work just hoping for commercial success in the conventional sense. Getting a book published would be nice, for instance. But a select few have created not only tomes but also expertise, a niche, a media presence and a brand that they can take to the bank in all sorts of different ways.

J.K. Rowling created that sort of property with the Harry Potter books. And Heidi Murkoff is a virtual best friend to legions of pregnant (especially first-time) moms thanks to the What to Expect When You're Expecting series, whose flagship title is now in its fourth edition.

A movie of the same title is due out on May 18th, starring Jennifer Lopez, Cameron Diaz, Elizabeth Banks, Matthew Morrison, Anna Kendrick, and Chace Crawford (watch preview clips above and below). And in another extension of the What to Expect brand, mass merchandiser Sam's Club has produced a line of WTE-branded baby products, while Murkoff has signed on to write for every issue of Sam's new bimonthly magazine.Continue reading...

Mormons, particularly Mormon moms, are proving to be social media ninjas. They're responsible for the meteoric rise of Pinterest, as the Deseret News has noted (and those wags at Gawker). They may not seem like your typical early adopters, but credit the group's social media savvy to the women of the church who glommed onto blogging early on. It's also opening up the LDS community and church brand to the wider world.Continue reading...