You can’t strive for equality if you don’t recognize a problem in the first place. Such is the case of Similac and its maker Abbott, who for years promoted its “Similac Strong Moms Rewards” program.
Just recently, without fanfare, it revised the program to “Similac Rewards.”
It took our team well over seven years for Similac to heed our call.
Alas, equality is a confusing topic for many.
Even while promoting and striving for it, the most well-intentioned organizations fall short. It was almost comical to see General Mills’ website once brag about marketing messages that were “inclusive and respectful” while promising not to produce marketing that “undermines the role of parents” – all the while employing its now defunct “Kid-Tested, Mother-Approved” Kix slogan. That decades-old catchphrase wasn’t banished until our team pointed out its own incongruity (again, over the course of several years).
Or when P&G ran its exclusionary “Thank You, Mom” Olympics campaign, coupled with language that stated – and we’re not making this up – “A world free from gender bias is a better world for all. #WeSeeEqual.”
So, the Similac revision is a major step in the right direction not just for fatherhood, but for parental equality. No parent should be made to feel less or lower in the eyes of anyone.
Similac isn’t perfect. In fact, it still has changes that need to be made – such as with its own company Google search description (below).
It must keep searching and recognizing its own problems without others having to point them out, and the real reward will come in the form of customer loyalty and increased revenue.
All of this is detrimental to families, of course, because it impedes the family from flourishing as it should without recognizing fathers as equal, competent parents.
care of babies, or can’t bottle feed, or don’t want to. It’s all very troubling for a company that prides itself on 
And yet, every so often we encounter an organization who Gets It, who realizes that dads matter every bit to the parenting world as moms – and the idea speaks to dads, and markets to them, and listens to them. Suddenly, dads matter and are valued as true parents and customers.
Whatever Medela is paying the people who handle its marketing and communications – it’s not enough.
So if there was ever a company that could be excused for playing the dad omission card (not that it’s ever right), Medela would be it. But they don’t stoop to that inappropriate level – they include dads on its 
But then you have some products which seem to bemuse our perception, products which have been marketed for so long, positioned in such a convincing way and aimed at a certain audience that we’ve come to believe its use was envisioned strictly for one gender.
A brief reflection upon its own history and founding – and a glance at its own latest ad – may encourage Boppy to return to its roots. Check out the bottom of this ad, where Boppy describes four of its product’s core uses, none of which have to do exclusively with moms (while physical breastfeeding does, general feeding – the word used in the ad – doesn’t).
It would’ve been great to be a fly on the wall when the male model (featured in this ad) got the call from his talent agent to appear in this Similac magazine ad:
All of this makes the communication from good2grow so unusual, who claims to be “a family owned and operated company” with “one simple goal—creating wholesome, nutritious drinks in irresistible packaging kids love.”
We recently met a couple expecting their first child, who received a nice little starter gift in the mail – a 
dadmarketing 
