the winning formula for marketing to fathers

THE WINNING FORMULAFOR MARKETING TO FATHERS

Yahoo! Recently released data1 showing that Fathers are spending more and more of the household budget and yet are still not included and often actively excluded from marketers messaging. So as this often ignored audience segment becomes a more important target how should we best talk to them?

This paper looks at what makes fatherhood an enjoyable and rewarding experience for men. By looking at research carried out on non-human primates we first learn that fathers really look to invest their limited resources in two main areas. They invest in being a good father, and doing all the things that ensures an infants survival up to adolescence, and they also invest in securing a mate and doing all the things that ensures when mating time comes around they have the pick of females. We also learn that these two investments are often interchangeable, with some males investing more in mating than being a good father and some invest more in bringing up their infants and less in mating.

The second thing we look at is what the perceived benefits are of having children, we see that in a similar way to the investments, the benefits also fall into 2 main categories; the emotional benefits and the financial benefits. Again we see how these two benefits are interchangeable, and as the financial benefits of children decreases so the perceived emotional benefit increases.

By knowing the things that fathers are willing to invest into fatherhood and also knowing what they perceive as the benefits we can begin to pull together a simple model that helps us understand which dials we need to turn and what perceptions we need to influence in order to help fathers feel that the benefits of fatherhood far outweigh the investment.

Maurice Wheeler, Doco, 2011

Executive Summary

Fathers have it tough you know, they aren’t blessed with the hormones, instincts and unique equipment mums have to help them quickly define their role and guide them in what they need to do.

It was always understood that the patriarch’s role in society was to provide food and protect his territory; this is the case for nearly all of the animal kingdom, including us humans. However, most Western civilisations have removed a father’s need to physically stand at the cave’s entrance and protect his family, by providing a police force and legal systems and by ensuring that society as a whole moves towards becoming safer and more protective of one another. We are also making great strides in ensuring a mother can fulfil the role of “breadwinner” with the same effectiveness as a father.

Men are typically simple beasts and knowing what box they are expected to be in is one of their great comforts - take away this clear role definition and they will begin to feel disenfranchised and useless.

At least in agrarian society where man was focused on agriculture and animal husbandry, there was a clear need for the father to teach his children the skills of the land. However, since the industrial revolution where fathers were separated from their families, shipped off to huge factories, and there was no option to teach your children the way of the steel mill, this role of skills teacher has also diminished.

Dr Diamond, author of the book “My Father Before Me: How Fathers and Sons Influence Each Other Throughout Their Lives”2 summed it up well in a recent interview on his website3

when he said:

“There are many reasons why fathers had become the “forgotten parent.” Despite the apparent timelessness of the father-son bond -- and more generally, the father-child connection – a sense of its power and closeness have waxed and waned over time. In agrarian society, for instance, fathers were very involved in their children’s lives. Yet by the end of World War II, fathers were seldom thought of as contributing to their children’s healthy development. Instead, they were more notable for their absence,

or for their destructive impact, as when they were abusive, neglectful, or dead.”

Dr Diamond also talks of how fathers are on a complex, challenging journey to becoming responsible parents in the eye of modern society, a journey riddled with moments of feeling emasculated, side-lined and ultimately wondering what their role is. (Diamond 2007)

Fathers have become marginalised in modern society

In the words of economists the world over, you are happy if the benefits outweigh the investment. If you’re really thirsty and decide you’d spend £1 on a bottle of water you’ll be happy if you find a bottle of water for just 50p as the benefits of the water, in your opinion, outweigh the investment. However, if you can only find a bottle of water for £5 you will, understandably be unhappy, as no bottle of water is worth a £5 investment!

To determine how we can make fathers happy we should look at what they are investing into fatherhood and what they perceive as its benefits. The analogy of the bottle of water is a relatively simple one, and might not reflect the complexities of a father’s investment/benefit calculation, so let’s look at a more complicated transaction, such as buying a house.

A house buyer has £250K to buy a house with and they feel for this money they would want a three-bed house in a nice town with a good school. They find a great £250K four-bedroom house, off the beaten track and in a lovely town but the nearest good school is 30 minutes away. So their investment will be £250K plus the time and effort of getting their children to and from the good school.

The benefits of the house are its four beds and its great location. If they believe the benefits of the house outweigh the investment they will buy the house and feel very happy. If we were to use a mathematical equation to show if the house buyer would be happy with this house transaction we would break it down as in the table at the bottom of the page.

So Fi+Ti<Sb+Lb is the equation for working out if a house buyer will ultimately be happy with their real estate decision.

What we want to find out is what the equivalent is for working out if a man will ultimately be happy with his role as a father?

Working out the fatherhood equation requires us to deduce what a father’s perceived investment options are and what his perceived benefits will be. When we have an understanding of the resources he is willing to invest (like the time and money investment resources in the house analogy) and an understanding of the things he feels are beneficial (like the house’s size and location benefit), we can see how we might be able to manipulate perceptions to make the fatherhood decision more rewarding.

The benefits of a transaction need to out weigh the investment

Financialinvestment

Timeinvestment

Sizebenefit

Locationbenefit

250KTime needed to get child to school+ < +The benefits

|of having a big house

Being in a good location

The nature and dynamics of what a man invests in fatherhood is complex to say the least, and society and culture will have an enormous influence on how a father balances the equation. In order to try and cut through these external influences I like to turn to our non-human primate cousins and use them as way of cutting things right back to the bare bones.

Fortunately there is a large body of research (Alexander at al. 1979; Barash 1982; Kurland and Gaulin 1984; Kleiman and Malcolm 1981; Alexander and Noonan 1979 to name a few) looking into the dynamic of the adult male/infant relationship in non-human primates. These esteemed anthropologists have boiled down the investment male primates put into fatherhood into two main components. The first component is all the resources they put into being a good parent such as feeding, protecting, disciplining and other things we as humans will find familiar.

The second is all the resources needed to actually secure a mate, so all the ritual, chasing off other male rivals, appearing to be genetically superior to other males and again all the other things we as humans can associate with. The anthropologists call these two buckets the parental investment (Pi) and the mating investment (Mi). Just as our house buyer has their financial investment and time investment, primates have a similar investment structure for being a father.

Interestingly different primates attach a different value to the different parts of their investment portfolio. As an example if our house buyer was a very rich man with very little spare time, he might want to prioritise his resources differently and spend more on a house that is closer to a good school. Thus increase his financial investment (Fi) in order to reduce his time investment (Ti). Or if the house buyer was a poor man with loads of time available, he might want to buy a cheaper house an hour away from the school, i.e. reduce his Fi and increase his Ti.

Males balance their investment between mating and parenting

Males balance their investment between mating and parenting

Primates have been shown to do the same. Typically males will prioritise more of their limited resources on mating investment (Mi), and less on parental investment (Pi), and females will do the opposite and invest less in mating (Mi) and much more in parental responsibilities (Pi). This is the same across almost all animals where the female carry the young and therefore by default needs to invest massive amounts in parenting.

However, some primates buck this trend and chose to invest their resources in different ways. For example in the Eburru Cliffs in Kenya, Barbera Smuts4 observed Olive baboons doing something very different. It would seem the male baboons felt the amount they were investing in mating was getting too much, it was a very aggressive polygamous society and the numbers just weren’t adding up. So they set about trying to reduce the amount of resources invested in mating (obviously subconsciously, instinctively and over hundreds if not thousands of years of evolution) by shifting their investment into parenting. The male baboons started to care for specific infants, and in return they got preferential mating rights with that infant’s mother. Like our time-poor, cash-rich house buyer, they changed the priority of their investment and invested more in parenting (Pi) so that they didn’t need to invest as much in (Mi).

The Owl monkeys of South America have made a similar investment decision but for

different reasons. The Owl Monkey lives in a very monogamous society where they form pair bonds i.e. a female Owl monkey will pair up with a male Owl Monkey and only mate with each other.

Thus, the amount a male monkey needs to invest in mating (Mi) is hugely reduced and as a result the males invest lots more in parenting (Pi). The Owl Monkey is one of only a handful of primates where males are the primary care giver - the mothers only carry the young for the first week or so of their lives, and the father does the majority of the child rearing.

So we can see how primates shift the priority of where they chose to invest their resources, but is this the same in humans? We might not want to admit it as it does sound very shallow that a man would only invest in parenting if it meant they got ‘preferential mating rights’ with the child’s mother but some research recently published in the scientific journal PNAS5 shows that when men become fathers their levels of testosterone drops, showing an inverse correlation between mating and fatherhood. Additionally men who looked after their children for 3 hours or more a day showed an even more acute drop. This shows when you dedicate resources to parenting you naturally reduce resources dedicated to mating.

In summary, the investment put into fatherhood is a combination of parental investment and mating investment or Pi+Mi.

Fathers get both emotional and financial benefits from fatherhood

Why do primates invest in producing offspring? Why do they happily care for their young, fight off competitors, build nests and do all the other things that require massive amounts of investment? Put simply it is about the propagation of the species, or put another way it is about passing on their genes and ensuring their offspring do the same.

Non-human primates do all this instinctively; they don’t know or care why they are driven to do all the crazy things they do in order to reproduce; but they just do it. In many ways we human primates are the same, but our brains have evolved to the point where we like to have rational reasoning and logical deduction as the foundation of our decisions. Therefore as the passing down of our genes is too abstract a concept for us to be able to effectively and reasonable rationalise we have begun to try and post-rationalise it with financial and emotional benefits which are far more tangible. It is these two benefits - like the size and location benefits of the house - that we use on the other side of the fatherhood equation; these are the benefits that justify the investment.

The financial benefits are obvious: have a child and when they are old enough send them to the factory to earn their keep. The emotional benefits are more complex, I believe they have roots in the instinctive desire to pass on our genetic traits. I believe fathers have translated this instinctive urge to pass on their genes into a more tangible urge to pass on their cultural legacy, their acquired skills and belief system. In effect, we have transposed genes for memes. If you turn on the TV in America during Father’s Day weekend, it is flooded with images of fathers teaching their child how to fish, how to shave, how to change a bike’s tyre, how to sit down and enjoy a game of football and so on. This passing down of traits reminds me of a great quote from Ruth E. Renkel about fatherhood “Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance.”

In summary the total reward that men attribute to becoming a father is a combination of the emotional benefit and the financial benefit.

In a similar way as with the investment ‘portfolio’ we are prone to give emotional and financial benefits different weighting in the equation depending on the situation. Our house buyer mentioned earlier might look at the benefits of a four-bed house off the beaten track, and decide that, as he has five children he would rather have a house with more bedrooms and sacrifice the location.

Equally he might like being in the heart of things and would be more than happy to have a smaller house in order to have a better location. So in the house buyer’s equation one person would happily downgrade the perceived benefit of the location (Lb) as they believe having a greater size benefit (Sb) to be more preferable. This goes the other way round as well. The same is true with how parents have weighted up and prioritised the emotional benefits (Eb) and financial Benefits (Fb). This was summed up nicely by Eibach & Mock6 (2011) when they concluded that:

“In an earlier time, kids actually had economic value; they worked on farms or brought home paychecks, and they didn’t cost that much. Not

coincidentally, emotional relationships between parents and children were less affectionate back then. As the value of children has diminished, and the costs have escalated, the belief that parenthood is emotionally rewarding has gained currency. In that sense, the myth of parental joy is a modern psychological phenomenon.”

Modern-day parents play a balancing game with both the perceived emotional benefit (Eb) and financial benefits (Fb), at the moment the trend is towards children having a higher emotional rather than financial benefit. Maybe in the future as the aging population needs to rely more and more on their children for financial support this trend will begin to wane and the emotional benefits will be perceived as being less important. However, it is the sum of the benefits that fathers consider to be the overarching payoff for having children.

So now we have both sides of our equation, both investment and benefit, we can see how we end up with the fatherhood happiness equation of Pi+Mi<Eb+Fb.

Fathers get both emotional and financial benefits from fatherhood

Parentalinvestment

Matinginvestment

Emotionalbenefit

Financialbenefit

Time and effort taken to find

a mate+ < +Emotional benefit of

having a child

Financial benefit of

having a child

Time needed to father

your child

On face value this seems terribly cynical, shallow and ultimately a damning indictment of a father’s motivation. Some could look at the fatherhood model, and draw the conclusion that:

“Fathers want to pass on their traits to ensure their legacy thrives in the future, and they want to do this with as little effort as possible. Therefore fathers want to keep their investment in fatherhood as small as possible and their most effective strategy to do this is to look after the children as it means they don’t need to try as hard to ‘secure the on-going mating rights of the child’s mother’ thus making more offspring easier to produce.”

However on second inspection it can actually show a more virtuous driving force. We could instead deduce from the equation that:

“Fathers want to ensure their best characteristics, skills and knowledge are passed on to their children to give them every chance of doing well. They also realise the best environment to do this in is a functioning and loving family unit.”

Depending on which side of the cynical line you sit you can derive a motivation that is not necessarily noble in its origins, but is definitely honourable in its execution.

Fatherhood is however not as shallow as it all seems

By understanding what makes fathers happy we can effectively engage with them

Why is Pi+Mi<Eb+Fb interesting. For some it may seem like a pointless exercise in anthropological, economical and mathematical navel gazing, not dissimilar to when ‘scientists’ discovered the formula for the perfect joke (c=(m+nO)/p). In fact it is a very useful tool for marketers when they look at ways of engaging with fathers.

We have a saying at Doco, we didn’t coin it but we use it a lot,: “Help me, don’t sell to me.” The best way to engage with an audience is to understand what they are going through, understand where they are looking for help, and then create scenarios where our client’s brands can help solve their problem. In the case of tweens it is all about garnering social acceptance and understanding their position within society, for kids is it about helping them understand who they are and how they want to be perceived. For fathers it is about helping them be happy with their role of being a father. What this equation does is help us understand the mechanics that goes into a father’s happiness, we now know the knobs, levers and pulleys we need to manipulate in order to make the fatherhood happiness equation a more positive one.

‘Help me, don’t sell to me’{ }

Happiness is achieved through reducing investment and increasing perceived benefits

The astute amongst you will have noticed that each of the factors that go in Pi+Mi<Fb+Eb are all subjective measures, they are all benchmarked against the expectations of the individual father. Two fathers who put in exactly the same amount of effort in parenting will perceive their investment as being different depending on what they are measuring against. It is this perception that we marketers try and influence: we try and make the perceived investment seem as small as possible and the perceived benefit as large as possible. Just like Guinness turned the perceived investment of the long wait for the bar man to pour the drink into something worth investing in with the slogan “Good things come to those who wait”, we want to make the investment of being a good father and partner seem small in comparison to the huge emotional (and to a lesser extent financial) benefits.

With this in mind we can condense marketing to fathers down to four main strategies:

Reduce perceived parental investment

Reduce perceived mating investment

Increase perceived emotional benefit

Increase perceived financial benefit

Examples of strategies in action

Visa – “Go World” Ad

This ad from Visa shows how Olympian Derek Redmond in Beijing 2008 tore his Hamstring in the 200m men’s semi final event.

Seeing Derek in pain and unable to finish his father ran onto the course and helped him over the line.

It was a very simple gesture, requiring very little parental investment yet the emotional benefit was huge.

Scan QR code to see video

http://youtu.be/BU3jfbb172E

All the videos can be seen in the blog post

www.DocoPeople.com/blog/marketing-to-fathers


Sainsbury’s – Live Well for Less

The new Sainsbury’s “Live well for less” campaign is a great example of how to market to fathers. It hits all 4 strategic points through great execution and consideration.

Reduced parental investment

The campaign shows a father taking his son out for a day at the seaside; all the activities they do are simple and cheap activities. Most fathers will see the advert and be acutely aware of the simplicity of the day, pancakes for breakfast, a train ride, a walk along the pier, a disposable barbequed sausage sandwich, an ice cream,

some TV time at the end of the day; all showing how easy it is to be a great dad.

Increased emotional benefit

As discussed previously the emotional benefits of being a father being particularly well demonstrated and articulated when you show how a father can pass on their traits to the next generation, continuing his legacy if you like. This is also well shown in this campaign, particularly in the print execution. Father and son, eating the same cake, drinking from the same cup, same hair, same bag, same jeans, same jumper, it is like a mirror is placed down the middle of the two allowing father to see himself and see the legacy he has created, the perfect creative execution of showing fathers the emotional benefits of having a son.

Increased financial benefit

The whole campaign is around ‘living well for less’ so the financial benefits are inherent in everything, including the TV ad sound track (Disney’s The Jungle Book classic – The Bare Necessities).

Reduced mating investment

The final scene shows the mum coming home to find father and son on the sofa, having some quality snooze time, and she showing she is happy.

Finally what I like most about this advert is they don’t resort to the stereotypical useless dad story line. It is a play often used to ensure they are not alienating mothers “don’t worry, dad can still not do it better than you” with clichéd destroyed house and eye rolling mums. This tired device it is patronising to mums who are rarely that insecure to think their job as mum is under threat, it is insulting to dads to assume they cannot look after their children for a day without accidentally burning the house down and as importantly it is damaging to the brand as it sets up divisive lines between father and mother and thus does not show how being a good father makes a stronger family unit.

All in all Sainsbury’s have done a fantastic job of engaging with dads in a market place full of ads targeting mums.


http://youtu.be/Twk9Y19oXvw

Peugeot “Nice Car Ad”

This classic ad from the 1990’s shows a man apparently picking up a women in a car park and having a rather ‘steamy relationship’ with her, then dropping her back off in the car park. He then goes home to his family, his kids rush out and he asks where their mother is, leading us to presume the women who he had picked up in the car park was not his wife. At this point

the women from the car park arrived behind him to showing that she was in fact his wife. The second advert in the series had a similar concept, but with a slight role reversal. The mum looks to be having an affair with the car cleaner, and the couple are interrupted by a sound coming from upstairs, which we are lead to believe is her husband. However

it turns out they are in fact married and the sound from upstairs is their child calling out for his parents, the dad offers to go and get the boy up. Both ads play with the concept of being a great lover as well as being a great dad.


http://youtu.be/4oPJlhMSGDI

http://youtu.be/jU-bcyiRL_o




KFC - ‘One Big Family’

Although this KFC ad doesn’t specifically target fathers, it is no coincidence that the majority of the adults in the advert are males rather than females. It shows people getting ready for a family gathering, focusing particularly on the small things you need to do. The underlying message is you don’t need to spend a lot of money or go to huge effort to get the whole family together, you just need a few tables and chairs and the rest looks after itself. Playing on the idea of minimising the perceived amount of parental investment needed to get the family together and enjoy emotional benefits. All this is obviously facilitated by the KFC bargain bucket:

http://youtu.be/1QjJAAMU4sA



McDonald’s Happy Meal - ‘Mum v Dad’

This advert from McDonalds shows a father trying to show an increased parental investment by being the one to get the McDonalds Happy Meal first to his son. Even though he ultimately fails to get credit, his playful attempts definitely ingratiates him with the mum which will be a success in his mind.

http://youtu.be/iQwbReKEvwU



Patek Phillippe

As discussed the key play in resonating with and influencing a fathers perceived emotional benefit is to play on the concept of passing things down, be they skills, knowledge, traits, experiences or material possessions. Patek Philippe built an entire brand around it with their “You never actually own a Patek Phillipe. You merely look after it for the next generation” slogan. In these print executions they talk about the passing down of a material possession, but they are also showing the passing down of the other things, and the inference of the continuation of a legacy. The sailing advert shows a father passing on the skills and experience of sailing, and the writing advert shows a passing on of mannerisms and gestures.


Real Estate Investment – Germany

This advert for a real estate agent takes it one step further and not only plays on the ‘pass things down to your child’ angle, but proactively dismisses genetic inheritance as inferior to material inheritance!


Werther’s Original – ‘Father and Son’

Werther’s Originals recently started to move away from showing grandfathers to focusing on fathers and their latest adverts show a whole montage of father-child bonding moments. You can see from some of the screens below each montage (apart from 2) play on the legacy piece and show the emotional connection in passing on traits and interests. From a surfing dad and his son, to a father and son falling over the same way, walking the same way and even wearing the same woollen jumpers. There is also a clip of a father passing on knowledge and showing his son something out of a bus window, finally they show a smiling father seeing his son after a long trip. A classic example of highlighting the emotional benefits of having a child.

http://youtu.be/TH9pXKjkEiE


Oreos - Father’s Day

It is always hard to get Fathers day adverts right without being too clichéd and I am not saying this Oreo’s ad recently run in the US necessarily managed it. That said, it was extremely effective, scoring 22%7 better on the standard ad effectiveness metrics than the norm for that period.


http://youtu.be/tf-xxVd8kfE


Ford Mustang - A short story

This great short story from Ford was the only example I could find of a brand being bold enough to talk about the financial benefits of having children, even though it does it with great comedy and pathos!


http://youtu.be/7AQZoYCF6FU


NAPCAN - Children see, children do

Finally, in Australia the organisation NAPCAN ran a series of adverts that told parents to beware of the traits that they are passing on and the legacy they are creating. It is a very powerful piece, made even more powerful as it turns on its head the positive of one’s ability to shape a child into your image, and makes it a potential negative.


http://youtu.be/7d4gmdl3zNQ


Fathers are struggling with their role in Western society, their primary assets and unique skills have been marginalised to the point where many fathers feel emasculated and irrelevant. Brands have a great opportunity to help them find their way and to help them re-evaluate what they are putting into fatherhood and what they are getting out.

As over-simplistic and potentially naïve the equation Pi+Mi<Eb+Fb seems it does give us a good set of variables that we can nudge in the father’s favour in order to ultimately help him find more happiness and fulfilment in his parental role.

Conclusion

1 http://advertising.yahoo.com/industry-knowledge/digital-dads-insight.html

2 My Father Before Me: How Fathers and Sons Influence Each Other Throughout Their Lives – Dr Michael J Diamond; W. W. Norton & Company; 2007

3 http://www.drmichaeljdiamond.com/docs/MJD_SuggestedQuestionsRevisedwithAnwsers_20070621.pdf

4 Sex and friendship in baboons; Barbara B. Smuts; 1985; Aldine Pub Co

5 Lee T. Gettler, Thomas W. McDade, Alan B. Feranil, and Christopher W. Kuzawa; - From the Cover: Longitudinal evidence that fatherhood decreases testosterone in human males

6 The Bottom Line of Raising Kids: Parents Rationalize the Economic Cost of Children by Exaggerating Their Parental Joy; Eibach & Mock 2011, Association for Psychological Science

7 http://www.8bitdad.com/2011/06/17/oreos-fathers-day-ad-affective-ad-is-effective/

Additional References

Childers, L. B. (2010). Parental Bonding in Father - Son Relationships. Liberty University.

Eibach, R., & Mock, S. (2011). The Bottom Line of Raising Kids: Parents Rationalize the Economic Cost of Children by Exaggerating Their Parental Joy. Waterloo: Association for Psychological Science.

Hewlett, B. S. (1992). Father-child relations: cultural and biosocial contexts. New York: Walter de Gruyter Inc.

Pittman, F. (1993). Man Enough: Fathers, Sons and the Search for Masculinity. Putnam.

References

Maurice Wheeler is the Strategic Planning Director and co-founder of Doco, the creative agency specialising in family.

Over his 15 years of working in the digital marketing arena Maurice has helped many clients including Nickelodeon, Disney, Microsoft, Tesco, Universal Music, Procter and Gamble and Lego.

Some of his more memorable pieces of work include working with TV institution Blue Peter to remain relevant to today’s contemporary audience; helping Tottenham Hotspur understand how they can work closely with their existing youth touch points to better engage today’s young fans – the adult fans of tomorrow; and advising Microsoft on how they can talk more effectively with the family audience for their Xbox games console.

Maurice has been asked to speak at conferences such as The Children’s Media Conference, Cartoon Forum, and MIP Junior, and has written for publications such as Campaign, Marketing Week, and MCV.

You will mostly find him reading research papers, preparing presentations, running or playing with his two boys.

About the Author

If you need to engage with fathers or would like to talk more generally about how we might be able to help with your kids and family strategy, please contact us

London: +44 (0)20 3206 7500LA: +1 323 559 0760

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.DocoPeople.com

Twitter: @hellodoco

the winning formula for marketing to fathers

Self Improvement