Marketing the "Ultimate Baby Shower"

Effective marketing? Or F.U.D. exploitation?

From what I’ve been reading about ViaCell’s “Ultimate Baby Showers”, they’re a little of both.

I first heard about them in a Beverly Beckham column in The Boston Globe a couple of weeks ago. Beckham - who I’ve read on and off for years - is a middle aged, common sense Mom (and Grandmom) who writes about life - and her column’s title “Ultimate Baby Shower Really Just a Rain of Fear” - pretty much says which side she comes down on.

Her column and the earlier Globe story on a ViaCell “shower” held outside Boston (which Beverly’s column was a follow up on) detail how ViaCell, a company that stores a newborn’s umbilical cord blood for use “just in case”, has been sponsoring these showers around the country. They do so, in conjunction with others who have stuff to sell to new parents - things like maternity fashions, ultra-strollers, in utero baby portraits, etc., to promote their services, which cost $2,195 down, plus $125/year.

Even though the likelihood that anyone’s baby is actually going to need that cord blood is very small, the company preys on the fears of parents - what if? what if? what if? - that they’ll be sorry if they don’t take this sort of insurance out. And just in case that $2,195 down seems like a lot of dough - especially given the money you need for ulra-strollers and in utero portraits - you can sign up on the ViaCell gift registry and have folks chip in to get it for you. (ViaCell is owned by Perkin Elmer, and I’m guessing that this is the first time that the words “Gift Registry” have appeared next to the words “Perkin Elmer.”)

As Beckham writes,

Primal parental fear is why ViaCord is potentially big business. Why not buy this kind of insurance if you can afford it?…Why is it that fear rules our lives? Fear of something being “wrong” with a baby. Fear that the $60 car seat isn’t as safe as the $260 one. Fear that a mattress might be too soft or too hard. Fear of toys made in China and clothing made of non-organic material. Fear of plastic and talcum powder, of cancer and autism, of mosquitoes and dog bites, of a bus sliding off a road, of undertows, of staph infections, of crossing the street, of kidnappers and molesters and terrorists?

We believe that if we’re vigilant and plan ahead and follow every rule, we can keep our children safe. But the truth is we can’t protect them from everything….

It’s dramatic. It’s corporate. It’s advertising.

And it’s big business - fueled by fear.

From The Globe article, we learn that the American Academy of Pediatrics, holds that “private ’storage of cord blood as “biological insurance” should be discouraged.’”and that i’s “not routinely recommended by the American Society of Blood and Marrow Transplantation.”

But if it’s your little baby kicking in your tummy, you’re probably not apt to be thinking that you’re being preyed on by a company that just wants to make a buck. You’re thinking, what if, what if, what if…

ViaCell, naturally, defends themselves, eerily using the Fox News motto to state that “It is the responsibility of the company to be fair and balanced.”

Meanwhile, they’re hosting these events around the country.

Personally, I think I’d feel a little better about myself as a ViaCell marketer if I were aiming my efforts at obstetricians and pediatricians, so that they would know about the company’s services if they had patients whose risk profile would suggest that storing cord blood might be beneficial. But that approach would not, of course, give you has many customers as going direct. No, combining the lure of goodie bags, raffles, and learning more about parenting (can new parents-to-be ever hear enough?) with the unsettling suggestion that there’s something else they could do for their baby if they really cared enough no doubt rings more cash registers at ViaCell.

Yes, it’s probably pretty good marketing.

But it’s also distasteful to co-opt an event - a baby shower - that should really be all about friends and family cooing over adorable onesies, Raggedy Ann dolls, and the nth copy of Runaway Bunny and Good Night, Moon.

Yet again, I am struck by how fortunate I am to be a B2B technology marketer.

Sure, we have plenty of issues of our own to grapple with, but marketing in these circumstances, blessedly, isn’t one of them.

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