Avon's Mark Brand Uses Social Media to Promote Grass-Roots Sales

The Avon brand is the archetype of traditional grass-roots marketing. And according to a recent article in the New York Times, Avon has been expanding their grass-roots business model to the youth and young adult market with their brand Mark. 


Avon's attempt to reach the youth market focuses on three key components:

• A celebrity spokeswoman, Lauren Conrad, former star of MTV's reality show "The Hills"
• Mark Representatives, i.e. the younger version of Avon Ladies
• A "Social Beauty" campaign to strengthen the brand and promote representatives through Facebook, blogs, an iPhone application, and other social media tools

According to Annemarie Frank, director of digital media and strategic alliance of Mark at Avon, “Mark Girls can advertise their ability to sell products right on their Facebook profiles, and the widget functionality of Mark’s e-shop enables us to drop the shop into other places to give the brand a presence wherever people hang out online."

Individual representatives are encouraged to get creative with their individual campaigns. Last fall, Mark Rewards Program advertised a contest for all-expense-paid trips to the Sundance Film Festival for the two highest-selling Mark Girls. One representative, Hannah Parish, created a Facebook event, “Send Hannah to Sundance,” and invited 600 people in her network to join, as part of her strategy. She sold $6,000 worth of products and won the contest.

Mark's social media strategy works well because it is consistent with the company's overall strategy. Additionally, Mark does a great job of giving its representatives both tools and incentives, and then gets out of the way. It trusts that Mark Girls to promote the brand in an effective way that resonates with their local communities while also providing a larger framework and message. I think it is a great model that other large corporations, not only direct selling companies, could learn from.

Insights on the iPhone Mom

Greystripe's Q3 Mobile Advertising Insights Report provides the most recent data about a little studied demographic: the iPhone mom. According to Greystripe, "the iPhone has greatly altered the mobile application user demographic" whereas in the past mothers were not "a group that advertisers could readily reach through mobile applications." Currently, however, "the iPhone Mom is now a common and active mobile application user. This demographic is particularly interesting to advertisers as iPhone Moms are the dominant purchasing decision makers for households with several consumers."

So who are the iPhone Moms? 62% are between the ages of 25-44, with an additional 24% between 45-54 years old. They are well educated: 30% have a Bachelor's degree, 4% have attended at least some graduate school, and an additional 16% have an MA degree or higher. iPhone moms are varied in the number of children they have and the ages of their children, although they tend to skew older.

Moms download a variety of applications. A full 94% of iPhone moms download games and entertainment apps, 76% download music apps, and 50% use social networking apps. They find out about apps through different sources, including looking at the top apps (67%), checking out the featured apps in the App Store (65%), and through friends (64%).

In addition to applications, 87% of moms use the device for email, 81% use the maps, 68% use the calendar, and 58% for social networking. 79% use their phone for activities related to shopping. The most common shopping related activity? Using their iPhone to locate the nearest store.