Published 17 October 2024

18 min read

Sales of toys, baby and post-partum products/services are rising globally (see Key Stats), but 48% of American parents alone are “overwhelmed by stress” (APA, 2023), signifying a huge – and lucrative – opportunity for brands to support caregivers from conception to college and beyond. We unpack the most resonant ads, spaces and services to draw inspiration from, including brand-backed play centres, ‘matrescence’ initiatives, zines and nutritional concierges.

Prospective Parents: Stores & Services Educate, Inspire & Aid Prep

Year One: Matresence, Medi-Concierges & Post-Partum Self-Care

Toddlers to 10-Year-Olds: Promoting Play, Relieving Parental Pressures

Tweens & Teens: Supporting Sex Ed and Social Media-Anxiety

All The Way to Adulthood: Ad Campaigns Cherish Closer Bonds

From pre-conception (including fertility) to birth, smart brands are creating inspiring educative stores and services to ease parents into their new life chapter. Spanning ultra-practical product testing (buggies, car seats) and health (“intimate” education, mental wellness), the best placate anxiety. Look also to specialist support, such as midwife expertise, to boost brand credibility.

From pre-conception (including fertility) to birth, smart brands are creating inspiring educative stores and services to ease parents into their new life chapter. Spanning ultra-practical product testing (buggies, car seats) and health (“intimate” education, mental wellness), the best placate anxiety. Look also to specialist support, such as midwife expertise, to boost brand credibility.

Summary

Prospective Parents: Stores & Services Educate, Inspire & Aid Prep

From pre-conception (including fertility) to birth, smart brands are creating inspiring educative stores and services to ease parents into their new life chapter. Spanning ultra-practical product testing (buggies, car seats) and health (“intimate” education, mental wellness), the best placate anxiety. Look also to specialist support, such as midwife expertise, to boost brand credibility.

Year One: Matresence, Medi-Concierges & Post-Partum Self-Care

Other brands are tapping into rising discourse around ‘matrescence’ (an adolescence-like period of change during new motherhood) and care gaps left by national governments. Key strategies include ‘relational wellness’ workshops (focused on the importance of nurturing positive and meaningful relationships with others), specialised in-store beauty services for new mothers, and post-natal medi-grocery concierge.

Toddlers to 10-Year-Olds: Promoting Play, Relieving Parental Pressures

 Smart brands are amplifying the positives (and mitigating the negatives) of life with young children via STEM-centric, joy-maximising brand spaces boosting playtime; AI services helping parents return to work by translating parenting skills to the workplace; and (in the case of one financial brand) assuaging parents’ financial worries via sanctuary-esque in-mall brand spaces.

Tweens & Teens: Supporting Sex Ed and Social Media-Anxiety

Other brands are allaying parental anxieties regarding teens and tweens by creating educative apps, zines and microsites catering to both teens/tweens and their parents on hot button issues from sex ed and social media to problematic beauty standards. Contemporary language and framing distinguish these from the dry, public service announcement style of conventional teen advice sites.

All The Way to Adulthood: Ad Campaigns Cherish Closer Bonds

Globally, parents are actively parenting for longer: in the US, grown children are turning to their parents for advice more than previous generations, while young Europeans are continuing to live at home (see Key Stats). Astute brands are responding with ad campaigns tracking parental journeys from cradle to college and beyond, showing solidarity with parents of boomeranging Gen Zers and millennials.

The Pulse of Parenthood: Retail Trends & Opportunities

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Offering access to over 350 consumer and cross-industry reports annually, Stylus Membership is your window to tomorrow’s most exciting opportunities.

We already arm more than 500 of the world’s most forward-thinking brands and agencies with the creative insights they need to make transformative business decisions.

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