In Appeal to Moms, Shapermint Creates New Chief Mom Officer

Shapewear brand Shapermint is unveiling a new chief mom officer campaign, shifting the tenor of its messaging from humorous to serious in order to speak to its audience of moms. Tackling the topic of how overtaxed mothers are during the pandemic, the company is offering an open application process for the role, advertising it via Facebook group HeyMama, a community for working mothers. The chief mom officer will be given creative freedom to champion both women and body positivity, according to Shapermint. Marketing for the newly-created role began this week. The chosen mom will be onboarded following Mother's Day weekend. Moms were hard-hit by the pandemic "I think the pandemic has disproportionately-affected women in general. And, you know, women and moms have to be multitaskers, given that they've been primary caregivers," Siobhán Lonergan, the company's chief brand officer, told Adweek. The outreach is crucial for the brand, given 80% of its customers are mothers, Longeran said. "Some of the efforts, from a brand perspective, you'll see, are really to highlight our mission, which is to empower women, to really enhance the whole body positivity conversation and to really inspire confidence with the people that we work with—our community and our partners," she said. To buttress the chief mom officer campaign, the brand will launch what it calls its unfiltered "Shaping Real MOMents" TV campaign, which highlights everyday situations mothers find themselves in, Longeran said. The next TV spot will air May or June, she added. Word-of-mouth marketing In addition, Shapermint is going to put more emphasis on word-of-mouth marketing via influencer marketing platform Grin—a move she described as one of the company's biggest strategic efforts. The company has created tiers of influencers for a brand ambassador program, with the goal of devoting its attention toward micro-, mid-tier and high-tier influencers, Longeran said. "Through that group, we will continue to spread the word and put the conversation around shapewear and our product," she said. With that in mind, Shapermint also wants to acknowledge the world is reopening in light of vaccinations and aim "to remind people to get dressed again," she said. "That's where our shapewear comes in," Longeran said. "We want to add that little element of boost or a little bit of body armor to go out there and get back into things." Adding new products It's not only a change in messaging that Shapermint is looking to make, however. "We want to really reposition ourselves as a marketplace where you can get leggings, bras, undies and shapewear," Longeran said. "And again, we want to make sure that we're giving people the foundational pieces to their wardrobe, whether that be everyday essentials like undies and bras or whether it's leggings, which are more of a lifestyle play." With new products slated for release in Q3, Longeran noted the brand is looking at further category expansion such as lingerie. "It's evolving as we build it," she said. "But I would say we're always going to be more functional than decorative in that sense." A fast-growing marketplace So far, Shapermint's strategy seems to be working with a compound annual growth rate of about 142%, reaching nearly $100 million sales in 2019, according to data compiled by Statista. At one point last year, the company was on track to achieve $170 million in sales, the brand's CMO Massimiliano Tirocchi previously told Adweek. In fact, according to the NPD Group, as of November Shapermint had captured 20% of the shapewear marketplace. Shapewear Marketplace Shapermint Harnesses the Power of Television to Boost Traffic

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In Appeal to Moms, Shapermint Creates Chief Mom Officer

Mothers constitute 80% of the online marketplace's customers

Richard Collings

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