For decades now communicators whose work ranges from consumer marketing to policy influencer communications have spent vast resources trying to connect with moms. This is a proven, data-based strategy that has worked for a long time. The challenge? That strategy has become more of an assumption, while the data has evolved and continues to very quickly.
As time management expert Laura Vanderkam (@lvanderkam) wrote in Fast Company “time-diary studies reveal that men are spending significantly more time interacting with their children now than they did two generations ago.” VanderKam added, “in some surveys, men report more work/life conflict than women. With the expectation of being good workers, men wind up being ‘dads in the shadows.’”
What does this mean for communicators? It’s another example pointing to why you may want to reexamine your approach to ensure that your strategy, and the research that guides it, is developed to match up to today’s modern families. To be clear, a good “moms strategy” is still very important but ignoring dads could prove costly.