In February 2011, as baby/primary school-focused retailer Mothercare was gearing up for one of its worst years on record, supermarket chain Morrisons bought rival brand Kiddicare for £70 million. This month, Morrisons built on that when it agreed to take over 10 Best Buy stores and turn them into Kiddicare outlets.

It’s a significant move when you consider that the bulk of Kiddicare’s business so far has been done online (it only has one store in its home townPeterborough). Now, Morrisons will spend £15m revamping the Best Buy stores as it seeks to turn Kiddicare into a bricks & mortars retail experience similar to Ikea or Apple.

Online values

Although the Best Buy take over is about giving customers a chance to test goods before buying (something Morrison’s management views as important), it’s important to keep in mind that Kiddicare’s values were developed online. The things that keep its customers coming back are quick and free delivery, competitive pricing, video tutorials and its online community.

While the first two are imperative for any online retailers, some analysts believe that the latter two points explain why Kiddicare is in the ascendancy and Mothercare has been struggling. Speaking to The Daily Telegraph recently, Conlumino retail consultant Matt Piner said: "In the past Mothercare relied on being the definitive source of information for expectant mothers, a position it used to justify its higher prices. However, with consumers increasingly confident using the internet and sites such as Mumsnet to educate themselves, the once habitual visit to Mothercare is becoming a thing of the past. Instead, consumers research what they need online and head to the cheapest retailers to buy it – which nowadays normally means one of the supermarkets."

In a nutshell, Piner’s comment explains why Kiddicare and Morrison’s is a good fit. It also explains a couple of the moves the company has made in the marketing/PR space. Firstly, Morrison’s has appointed Alison Lancaster as chief marketing officer at Kiddicare and marketing director, online non-food, at Morrisons. The significance of this is that she was previously cross-channel director at highly-regarded, fast-growing retailer White Stuff.

Secondly, it is using social media to drive its launch PR campaign. Here, the plan is run a vote via Facebook that will decide which of the ten new stores opens first this coming autumn. This is a neat way of mobilising Kiddicare’s fanbase on its behalf. When you combine the traffic to its own site with the 31,000 likes Kiddicare has on its Facebook page, the vote will be a good way of alerting people to the new stores (which will be within reach of about 30% of theUK’s population). That’s before you even get into any display advertising on relevant and related digital platforms.

What next for Mothercare?

For rival Mothercare, the big job in the physical world is to refocus its retail business in a similar way to Morrison’s/Kiddicare. This means getting out of some of its rundown high street stores and having a bigger presence in out of town locations. At the same time, though, the company has also realised that online might be a way for it to tap into some of the latent power of its own brand.

In July 2011, it brought in Diffusion to develop a social media strategy. The kind of things it was asked to do included listening to parents’ views on brands and products, helping it participate in relevant communities, raising awareness of Mothercare's social networking community Gurgle.com.

It’s still early days, but Diffusion did score a big hit in the run up to Christmas when it organised an Advent Calendar Competition on Mothercare’s Facebook page (and also on sister brand Early Learning Centre’s Facebook page). The competition gave visitors the chance to win a prize or secure a special offer when they opened a door on their advent calendars. Backed by seeded content and email marketing, it proved very successful – adding more than 30,000 fans across Mothercare and ELC in the first fortnight as well as encouraging much greater dwell time from existing users. All told, there were 128,850 entries into the competition, which also grew a central email database. At time of going to press the momentum was still building with MothercareUKhaving a pretty impressive 53,737 likes on its Facebook page.

Key Insight: Speaking via econsultancy.com, Diffusion’s head of consumer division Tom Malcolm said it isn’t just the prizes that create engagement but context.  “Brands need to think carefully about their app development strategy to ensure their investment is tapping into conversations that their fans and potential fans are already having across social media.  Prizes alone will not generate long term brand loyalty – it’s vital that brands show an understanding of what they’re audience is actually interested in if they’re to form a lasting relationship with consumers online.”

Andrew Tyler, group head of Mothercare Media, seems convinced: “This campaign has really demonstrated for us the benefits of listening to both the needs and interests of our existing communities in increasing the fans we have online”.