Eumom wins maternity hospitals contract: ThePost.ie


TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2003/06/01 > Eumom wins maternity hospitals contract

Eumom wins maternity hospitals contract
Sunday, June 01, 2003

By Catherine O'Mahony

The contract to distribute promotional materials at Dublin's three maternity hospitals has switched for the first time in 25 years from Bounty Euro RSCG to Eumom, the company behind pregnancy website, eumom.com.

The three-year contract is worth at least €2.4 million, according to Joey Mason, founder and managing director of Eumom.

"This is really going to make us a player," he said. Mason said he planned "to reinvigorate the Bounty concept and bring it into the 21st century" through online and offline promotions.

Maternity hospitals probably represent the ultimate in target marketing for advertisers like Procter & Gamble, Milupa, Cow & Gate and Mothercare. An estimated 2 million new mothers at the Coombe Women's Hospital, the National Maternity Hospital and the Rotunda have received socalled Bounty giftpacks in the past 25 years ± a selection of tiny jars of nappy cream, packs of nappies and promotional leaflets.

"We're planning to change the quality of the presentation quite dramatically," said Mason, who said he was researching what women wanted to see in the packs. "For advertisers, we want to get a higher quality of interaction with the women they are targeting. We want them to be able to choose better when and how they speak to their target customers."

The first concrete sign of a change will come in the shape of an Eumom rucksack containing all the usual promotional materials, which will be distributed to new mothers from July 1 at the Coombe Hospital and National Maternity Hospital, and at the Rotunda in 2004. The Eumom website was set up in November 2000 and attracts 20,000 unique visitors a week. Mason said he hoped to add value to the site by including news from the maternity hospitals and, further down the line, adding SMS messaging options.

He said the community element of the Eumom site had developed in the past year, with 12 groups of mothers meeting last Christmas in Dublin, Cork and Galway as a result of contact made through the site.

Eumom has started negotiations with several of the advertisers who worked on the Bounty packs. "We know we're a new kid on the block and that we need to prove ourselves," said Mason.