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Jedd Gold and Jeff Lipp- Tastemaker Mom won the recent LAUNCH Competition at Techweek LA
America’s 85 million moms control over half of household spending. There is nothing more consumer marketers want than to influence that spending. Yet many moms say that most advertising and marketing isn’t geared to them; Tastemaker Mom wants to change that.
“We know there are a lot of underappreciated moms,” said COO and co-founder Jeff Lipp. “So we tapped into this wonderful community of opinionated and bright women by giving mom’s a voice.”
Tastemaker Mom is an invite-only club of moms who agree to share information about themselves and their opinions. The website has tapped into something powerful by colorfully designing a survey that makes participants feel comfortable, and by working hard to let moms know their voices are being heard.
Founded within LA-based incubator Amplify, in January 2012, Tastemaker Mom is also part of the Kive Company, which previously had success with a popular children’s art archiving app, called Artkive. The company has $600k in seed funding from Amplify and several angel investors. Tastemaker Mom hopes to grow its 20,000 mom user-base by leveraging relationships with Artkive’s 250,000 users.
Tastemaker Mom has grown to its current size solely on the willingness of moms to share. “We see this as a trend of people handing their information to a trusted source,” said Lipp. “We’ve built an environment where they feel comfortable to share a lot of information.”
Sold as “Mom power. Now with perks,” Tastemaker Mom first asks moms fill out an initial two-part survey and then includes them in conversations with marketing executives, gives them product samples and the privilege of knowing they “are probably seeing things before other moms,” said Jedd Gold CEO and co-founder.
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Malibu-based toy company Jakks Pacific recently used the platform to reach moms with daughters ages three to seven years old to hear their opinion on Cabbage Patch Kids, and moms with daughters five to eight years old to ask them about Skechers Twinkle Toes shoes.
“Toys are like fashion – they are trendy and come into the market quickly with no specific exit date – you never know when the kids will fall out of love with it,” said Stephanie Berrios, Jakks Pacific director of marketing. “No one knows their kids and can articulate for them, like their Mom. It’s a way for Moms to speak honestly about their true feelings on topics, as well as their kids.”
“You have to listen to your audience!” said Berrios. And Tastemaker Mom is a “concise way to hear from Mom’s within a target demographic quickly and easily.”
Jakks Pacific used the survey results to “immediately and productively make pertinent decisions on million dollar toy product lines,” said Berrios.
“Ideas are being filtered through our moms and their voice is being heard in meetings at big companies,” said Lipp. When it can, Tastemaker Mom lets participating moms know their voices made a difference. Something Lipp and Gold describe as completing the “feedback loop.”
Recently, eBeanstock, a toy company, reached out to a subset of Tastemaker Moms to hear their insight on the company’s online toy-buying experience. After reflecting on the survey’s results, the CEO of eBeanstock made changes to their website and thanked moms of their tremendous impact via a personal email.
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Such feedback is one reason the company boasts an email open rate of around 50 to 70 percent and a response rate of around 30 to 40 percent.
The platform is naturally appealing to marketers: “Wouldn’t it be nice before you went in to take a test, if you knew the answers?” said Gold. “Ad agencies can go more confidently to their clients and say, ‘We have 500 moms in this age range, in this demographic.’ And that’s really powerful because it’s not licking your finger and sticking it up in the air.”
In the future, Gold said Tastemaker Mom wants to capitalize on the engagement and opinions of its users by adding a “causes section for moms to get behind.” But right now the company has plenty of work connecting moms who are eager to share with marketers who are just as eager to listen.
