US blogger outreach in consumer absolutely depends on Mommy Bloggers. At my last job, pretty much every campaign I was a part of involved moms in some way.  Clients wanted to ‘tap in’ to the Mommy blogosphere because they constantly heard how valuabe they all are – and giving a couple hundred samples of product out to influential household decision makers is just a drop in the bucket for their budgets.

Last summer, assuming my new job would now be all about Mummies, I started reading a lot more Mummy blogs, trying to get acclimated to the Mommy/Mummy differences.  I found a fair amount (no where near as many as in America), but what I did not find was any evidence of PR involvement.

I thought this was a fantastic opportunity. After all, how amazing would it be to be at the forefront of this vast, new “undiscovered” online consumer market in the UK?

Going a bit farther back, I remember when I was interviewing in London, someone asking me why the hell any bloggers – even Mums – would care about a granola bar.  I replied, “Why wouldn’t they?  If someone legitimate on the street came up to you with a free sample of something, you’d take it, right?  And if it was really good you might tell someone to try it, yes?”

That was always my thought about Mommy Bloggers.  Of course, they’ll try a granola bar or a DVD for the kids or a candle.  Why not?  People like free stuff!  I assumed this thought process would work for the UK as well.

Yeah, not so much… But not necessarily because they don’t like free stuff. It really comes down to a the fundamental differences in Mommies and Mummies, which I see as the following:

  • Privacy – Us Yanks have a tendency to talk way too much about ourselves to anyone who will listen. Yank Moms (from my experience) tend to talk an awful lot about their kids.  I haven’t run into the same thing here at all.  In fact, a lot of the Mummy blogs I’ve run into are written by American Moms living in the UK.
  • Community – Yes, there is a Mummy blogging community, but it’s no where near as vast or as interactive.  It’s more about Mums getting the information they need online and getting out, which brings me to…
  • Need – What seems to be more popular and – dare I say – useful to UK mums  are the more traditional advice-giving sites like Mums Net and Net Mums. (Really clever names, by the way…)

So does PR involvement with Mums even stand a chance? It depends.

The limited outreach that I’ve done with Mums suggests that it doesn’t, but in all fairness I haven’t had any campaigns that are a perfect fit for the Mummy market (I haven’t so much as touched a product for review in five months). But I also haven’t really seen other agencies work with them either.  This could mean that either there really *is* a huge opportunity out there or it could mean that this sort of online PR simply won’t work.  Or,  from a truly business perspective it could mean that because there isn’t as big of an audience and/or community, it’s simply not worth the hours.

My thought is that it’s a little of everything. Even if Mummy blogging takes off and UK PR gets in on the game, it won’t be and can’t be done in the same fashion as in America.  I’m not holding my breath though.

*Mummy photo from Mego Museum

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