Our new baby girl had a stubborn diaper rash that seemed to be resistant to standard, over-the-counter creams. Eventually, we took her to the pediatrician, who prescribed some topical medication. After several days, it became obvious that the prescription was failing to resolve the problem as well. We had considered cloth diapers (more for environmental reasons at the time), even before she was born; but time went by and in the end it was just easier to buy some disposable diapers off the shelf (the hospital provides new mothers with some disposable diapers as well). So we used this occasion as an opportunity to try them. We searched locally for organic cloth diaper vendors and found one in Bellingham.
We picked them up on the same day and after using them for the next 3 changes, the diaper rash was gone. This result was not surprising to our friends who had recommended that we transition to cloth in the past.
We heard about the benefits of using cloth diapers via word of mouth over the years; but the marketing message of big company disposables was louder and more pervasive in our lives. Besides, we had developed a habit of using disposables for our other children and breaking habits is hard to do.
But it’s not just consumer habits that organic cloth diaper manufacturers and distributors need to break through. They also have to break the the habits of the maternity wards who have closet-fulls of disposables and the pediatricians who prescribe medicated solutions as the first course of action. They would probably be best served by marketing their value message to these motherhood agents so that they can spread the word for them – as an alternative to disposables.
It’s not easy for marketers to change old consumer habits, especially if they don’t have the funds to broadcast their message long enough to dilute existing paradigms. The Internet is making it easier to do this. Email, blogs and other new media make it possible to broadcast a message consistently and provide a library of information to those who are seeking it. What’s more, the Internet allows us to do it without the budget required for traditional mass broadcasting.
Television is an old habit too. And it might also behoove manufacturers and distributors of organic cloth diapers to pool their resources and run a campaign that offers an alternative to the medicated solutions that are already advertised regularly on television. Presently, the advertising message on television seems biased toward prescription medication solutions for everything. Countering those messages might be effective.
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