Mom's The Word On Dinner

There's a new "campaign" out from Ragu that is causing quite the online stir.  I myself have joined the conversation, and asked some of my Twitter friends for their opinion too.

Mom's The Word on Dinner (cute title) is a video conversation that Ragu started with some Mommy bloggers to talk about different aspects of cooking and eating dinner.  It's quite interesting, actually, that the brand is highlighting bloggers --- they're a group that we've seen grown in influence in a very short amount of time.  In many areas, they've become thought leaders and trend setters.  Food happens to be one of them.  We work with a lot of bloggers across a lot of different categories.

Well one of the segments focuses on Dads in the kitchen, and this is where the emotions heated up just a bit.  On first blush, the videos seem to be dissing Dad.  When I actually looked at them a couple times, they actually are not as bad as I first thought.  But at first glance, they appear to be accentuating outdated  stereotypes about Dad not being so great in the kitchen.  Dad being kind of dumb ... bumbly fumbly Dad when it comes to anything in the house.

I will admit that it's a sore subject for me.  Most Dads I know are as involved with their kids as the Moms, and so many Dads I know are amazing cooks.  Some of them even better than their wives, who have no problem with that.  I have a few friends that are stay-at-home Dads and I was once a single Dad myself.  I made career choices that kept me close to home, and even worked from home at one point so that I could take care of my kids.

So I don't like it when I even remotely see old stereotypes of Dads.  I don't blame Ragu necessarily, they put together an engaging campaign but I don't think they were thinking out of the box enough.  P&G also got some commentary about leaving Dads out of their "Celebrating Moms" campaign during the Olympics. so this isn't really anything new.  It would have been so cool for Ragu to also feature Daddy bloggers, because they are out there in mass too!

Let's celebrate parenthood, Dads and Moms, and put these folks on a pedestal.  It's a hard job, particularly now as the economy has us all so stretched.

Enough of the dissing of Dads.  Now go buy some sauce.

What's your experience?  Jim.

Jim Joseph
President of Lippe Taylor
Author of The Experience Effect