Mom, apple pie and how to tout a family business
More than a third of the Fortune 500 companies are family-owned. Family businesses account for nearly 80% of all new job creation, 60% of employment and a staggering 50% of the gross domestic product. Three of the country's top 10 billionaires owe their wealth to a family biz — Sam Walton's kids at Wal-Mart.
So when it comes to marketing and growing a company, the decision to put the family front and center is serious business. It's a strategic marketing choice, not a way to save money or resources.
Connect family values and work ethics to a product or service and — boom! — you announce to the public that an honorable leader is in charge. There's a mama or a papa at the helm who takes responsibility. There are hard-working offspring or relatives who care passionately about success and service — after all, the future of the family depends on it. Customers applaud that.
The family-ness factor works well in marketing," says Ira Bryck, who directs the Family Business Center at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. "Just as long as the business is treated like a business and the family is treated like a family."
Family marketing success stories
In this demanding climate, building strong customer relationships is once again in vogue — very simply because keeping loyal customers is a lot cheaper and smarter than trying to acquire new ones. And when the name of the game is "trust the brand," the image of a family business is an immediate winner. Customers and stakeholders see family-run shops as nurturing and more ethical, especially in these Enron-ized days. They become emotionally invested in its success.
In the early 1980s, Columbia Sportswear owner Gert Boyle, then in her 60s, began appearing as "Mother Boyle" in ads for the Portland, Ore., sportswear firm, which was founded by Boyle's parents in 1938. Aggressive and humorous, the campaign pitched the notion of quality, emphasizing Gert Boyle's exacting matriarchal standards: "One tough mother" ran the tagline, and later, "Don't forget who makes the pants in the family." Though the company went public in 1998, Boyle, still chairwoman, remains Columbia's face.
Likewise, Frank Perdue appeared in TV commercials during the 1970s with his own tough bird message: "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken." That worked, too. Shoppers began asking for roasting chickens by the producer's name — unheard of at the time.
"Marketing the family is an enhancer," agrees Peter Tourtellot, managing partner for a Greensboro, N.C., corporate turnaround firm and the former chairman of the Turnaround Management Association, a 4,800-member group for corporate renewal and turnaround. "When the family has been in business for years, you're saying the firm can be trusted."
