Calling Cathie
July 24th, 2008
Cathie Black, President of Hearst Magazines, could easily start her own baby business. When we spoke to her several weeks ago, she was bubbling with brilliant ideas about how to best get our name and message out there.
“Make your presence felt and be persistent,” was Cathie’s overarching advice. This holds true across the board — be it with retailers, media or the end customer.
“If a retailer does not return phone calls,” Cathie said “try showing up at their doorstep – product in hand.” She also encouraged us to start a newsletter - something we are currently working on - to update key people on our progress and to keep Dapple fresh on their minds.
Cathie thought it would be great if we could get high-profile, trend-setting, “alpha moms” to try out and endorse our products. We immediately seized on that advice and worked on getting Dapple into the hands of taste-maker mommies. Our efforts paid off: a couple of weeks ago we were invited by Jayneoni Moore to include Dapple products in an exclusive baby gift basket for moms such as Halle Berry, Jessica Alba, Angelina Jolie and Courtney Cox. In fact, we just received a “Thank You” note from Courtney and Coco telling us how much they liked Dapple. Cool, right?
Per Cathie’s advice we also keep pursuing media channels that are important to us. This month Dapple was featured in the New York Observer, Fit Pregnancy, Big Apple Parent and many, many online publications and blogs.
But Cathie’s most creative ideas were focused on the most important person … the average parent who, like us, is facing a sink full of smelly bottles and a house full of sticky toys. Cathie counseled us to be everywhere that parents with young babies are, to be a resource to them and to get as many of them to try our products as possible. Some of the many specific ideas Cathie had were: give bottle washing presentations in places where parents congregate and on You Tube, distribute product samples in new parents classes, pediatrician offices and nursery schools, host lunches, sponsor free parenting classes, and much more…
When we hung up the phone we felt very very busy but extremely energized.
Thank you Cathie!
BTW: Here’s a link to the NY Observer story. Please note that my kids are much cuter in real life.
(http://www.observer.com/2008/arts-culture/ivory-snow-uber-moms).
