When Scandal Rocks Your Industry:

Dos and Don'ts When You Market to Parent-Consumers

The media has the duped consumers bouncing off the walls, their keyboards, click, click, clicking, instant messaging their friends, frenetically e-mailing colleagues, in-laws and former college buddies. Whose got the latest breaking news? Everybody's tuned-in to Yahoo, MSN and whatever they can skim and minimize guardedly before the boss or the kids stroll past the screen.

This month it's the student loan industry and their predatory marketing practices, the culprits including the likes of JP Morgan and equally-respected financial giants; two months ago it was Mattel, another premier corporate darling and their perpetual, lead paint-tainted recalls.

As a result, parents boycott toy companies, seek alternatives to borrowing student loans for college and shun products and services connected with emerging nations altogether, because "who can you trust."

Child-related bad news, to the detriment of innocent businesses, has a way of imploding the parental reasoning faculties. Why? Because when it comes to their children, a parent's first instinct is prevention and protection, not how much sense something makes. Grab your kids and run, because everybody else is running, and find out later (after your kids are out of harm's way) what the matter was. If it's just the parent, they might be inclined to investigate before reacting, but it's not as likely when it involves their children.

So what's a business, that is not a culprit, to do?

OWN UP TO WHAT IS GOING ON IN YOUR INDUSTRY. Acknowledge what's going on, and share words with your customers that sincerely show you feel the parents' anger and that you understand their skepticism. If you are parents, tell them so; show them you relate to their frustration. Get personal if you must. You are more likely to win the parents' confidence when you look like them and not like a money-grubbing, frosty corporate entity.

CUT-OFF THE MEDIA'S INFLUENCE. You need to encourage your customers (without insulting their intelligence) to read the news with a grain of salt, with an insightful eye. Alert them to the productive corporate measures that the media is leaving out of their version of the controversy. You must work as hard to stop the defection of your customers as the media is at scaring them to death. Take full advantage of every tool available to you: message boards, newsletters, e-mail, weblogs, podcasts, vlogs, social networking forums, traditional letters, informative brochures, ads, articles, etc. In the wake of an industry scandal, you cannot afford to be complacent or rest on your laurels; you do not want your customers looking at the situation solely from the viewpoint of the media with no reparative input and clarification from you.

SHOW YOUR HUMAN HUMANITARIAN SIDE, NOT YOUR CORPORATE HUMANITARIAN SIDE. Separate yourself by a standard that is important to you that the other companies perhaps take for granted. For example, demonstrate to your customer that, although you are in business to make money, it is not at the expense of you customers or your customers' children. Note: Don't patronize them by trying to portray an image of being "all about the customer and only all about the customer," because parents know if it was just about the consumer, you'd be a charity and you're not. However, you do want to be very clear that your company honors a win-win objective. If it means not exceeding last year's earnings by a bigger profit margin, then so be it.

Immediate action and strong action are musts in these situations.

In other words, when scandal rocks your industry, do something!

About the Author

My formal copywriting career began a year ago with writing marketing material for businesses and organizations that market to women. However, my greatest passion manifests, and my most effective work product results, when my projects are targeted to women (and men) in their role as parents. After months of brainstorming, I readjusted my focus to the group to which I have an extraordinary sensitivity and intuitive connection - - parents.