• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, October 25, 2023

When it comes to having or not having children, the world has always been full of busybodies. With "Invisible Mothers," Peanut hopes to bridge the loneliness that comes with that kind of judgment.

Peanut, started five years ago by a new mom struggling to adjust to being home alone after a busy career running an online dating site, connects about 3.5 million women monthly users. They come to the app to share about everything from infertility and breast-feeding woes to losing touch with friends.

The campaign is running on all Peanut channels, including social, app, web and email, as well as earned media coverage and podcasts. The brand is also using content marketing through Peanut's blog to enhance SEO, and an 'Invisible Mothers' microsite contains information, resources, and community interaction. 

It’s also using a network of influencers who are activating peer-to-peer storytelling.

“Peanut is about fostering community at every life stage,” says Hannah Hastings, vice president of the brand, “whether you're thinking about conception, struggling to conceive, all the way through to pregnancy, postpartum and beyond. We also recently launched a community for women going through menopause.”

In 2017, she points out, “no one was talking about the taboo of motherhood, loneliness and mental health challenges.” While there were many online forums full of anonymous profiles, “there weren’t many tech solutions,” she tells Marketing Daily. “We wanted to create a place to talk about the reality of motherhood online. It can look very bright. But it's not all joy.”

Because COVID sped up the use of digital connection tools and made many people feel more isolated, the team noticed the word “invisibility” continually surfacing, she says.

So Peanut conducted research. Among the startling insights: Most women feel the judgment juggernaut starts well before motherhood, with intrusive questions like “When are you getting married?” and “When are you having kids?”

“Once someone has a baby,” she tells Marketing Daily, “people immediately begin to ask, 'When are you having the next one?’”

Sometimes, invisibility is a societal expectation, like keeping a pregnancy under wraps. “You don’t get much support from the healthcare system," says Hastings. And while everyone asks about the pregnancy and eventually the baby, no one asks, 'How are you?’”

In its U.S. research, 79% of the women say they feel invisible, and 95% feel unacknowledged, unappreciated or unseen. And 94% say that since having a child, they’ve been reduced to the single identity of a mother.

About 70% of respondents say family members are the worst offenders, followed by friends at 62%, partners or spouses at 53%, and healthcare professionals at 34%. But they also feel unwelcome expectations from social media (31%), coworkers, and strangers, (both 30%).

The pandemic, which some experts say has pushed about 500,000 women out of the workforce, has underscored the complexity of career expectations.

There is a strong feeling that mothers are expected to do everything at home, then show up at work and keep up with peers. “There's just a lack of flexibility,” Hastings says, “with women saying, 'How am I juggling this all?’ And there is a real sense of opportunities they’ve lost because of motherhood. They feel vulnerable. They feel pushed out. They’ve lost their identity. And that all leads to this sense of invisibility.”

She says the campaign is getting some unexpected firepower from “Barbie.” As the company began preparing the campaign, a clip from the movie went viral, expressing many of the same frustrations.

Peanut, available in the U.K., the U.S. and Mexico, is considering a move into Spain. One feature, Peanut Pods, features live audio to create a topic and have conversations with women in real time. Those are genuinely global, she says, fueled by moms up late at night for feedings.

“They may want to talk about strains in their relationship or maybe just chit-chat about the Kardashians,” Hastings says. “Sometimes you want to make local connections and meet up in real life. But there are also times when you just want real-time connection, so women seem to be very happy to chat with people on the other side of the pond.”