• by Holly Pavlika , Columnist, September 28, 2011

Moms love brands for myriad reasons, but first and foremost, brands have to make great products. If the brand creates the right experience around the product, it will have the beginnings of a great relationship with mom. What is entailed in creating a great brand experience? It can be anything from supporting a cause to offering great tools and information to creating something that touches an emotional chord to being a brand that brings you just plain fun.

1. Johnson and Johnson

For 125 years, Johnson & Johnson has made products that moms trust. But how does it keep itself relevant with today's mom? It understands that you don't have to fill your brand messages with content about the brand in order to connect with today's social mom. Providing a service as it has with these two tools will create a long-term relationship. Its free Text4baby mobile app delivers on-the-go health information for new mothers and the first year of baby's life. The text messages are timed to the baby's birth date so the information is always pertinent and right at her fingertips. And for the mom who is a blogger and wants to showcase her favorite charity, J&J has created a simple to use widget that allows her to show her support of multiple non-profit organizations.

2. Target

First of all, Target offers a variety of deals, offers and discounts both on its website and through its owned social channels. And it always presents the information in a clean and clear way, which busy moms appreciate. But the reason Target is on this list is for its total commitment to mobile. Moms can shop without carrying around cash. Through the Target mobile app, Moms can checkout purchases anywhere, find offers/discounts, and update gift registers. She can get exclusive offers via text messages, check prices by scanning the barcode right from her phone, create shopping lists, and even create mobile gift cards. Target understands convenience and great tools that help her get things done that are high on her list.

3. Gerber

Aren't we all Gerber babies? Since first launched in 1928, the Gerber baby has been an iconic symbol for healthy babies. To keep up with this generation of babies and their moms, the brand has created numerous mobile apps from the birth app to track sleep, feeding and even a mobile scrapbook to a pregnancy calendar app to track your weight and record appointments. Long known for care and nutrition, Gerber's Start Healthy, Stay Healthy app is filled with tips, quizzes and information for keeping baby healthy. Gerber really understands moms hunger for content and information, especially when it comes to raising a healthy and happy baby.

4. Crayola

How can you not love Crayola when even its Facebook page rules of engagement are fun: "Use your manners. Remember that little eyes could be viewing what you write." They understand moms want to instill in their child a sense of caring for the world at large, and to encourage their imagination and ideas. It's using solar panels to provide power to make the crayons, using recycled plastic, and planting a tree for every tree used to make the pencils. And the PopArt Pixies are an interesting twist where moms are portrayed as avatars that have created all kinds of fun craft ideas a mom can do with a child. Brands often forget moms love to have things they can do with their kids. Plus, you have to love a brand that fully discloses that you might have to wash your child's clothes a couple of times to get the Colored Bubbles out.

5. Kraft Foods

Kraft Foods has so many wonderful applications and tools to offer moms. Who wouldn't love the My Recipe Box, where the recipes you choose can be exported out into a shopping list and it's organized by category? A fabulous companion piece to the recipes is its YouTube Cooking School for those who like a tutorial. Kraft is getting very creative by listening to the moms and the Twitter chatter to identify trends and ideas for new products and recently launched a social plug-in called Smiletagging for bookmarking sites that make you smile. It understands moms love a few smiles and a bit of humor to brighten the every day.

Remember, your content has to live in multiple places as moms are channel agnostic and choose different platforms for different tasks. And if you really want to "get it right," invite a few moms in to ideate with your marketing team. They'll have plenty of great thoughts and ideas to share!