SYDNEY: Publishers and advertisers wanting to target parents are better off appealing to the “whole person” rather than just their role as parents, according to a Buzzfeed executive.

Charleen Ong, Director of Client Services at BuzzFeed Australia, addressed this topic at the recent Marketing to Mums conference in Sydney, where she explained that there are multiple reasons for people to visit the site.

“A person is going to come to BuzzFeed not only to take the quiz, ‘What Disney Princess are you?’ but also to have a look at what's being said about the latest polling in the same-sex marriage survey,” she said.

“We like to say that we create content for the whole person.” (For more details read WARC’s report: Buzzfeed rethinks content for millennial parents with Tasty.)

Marketers need to remember that their ‘parent’ target audiences have other interests than just their kids, especially when it comes to what they want to read or watch online.

According to Ong, BuzzFeed research revealed that purely parenting-themed content may actually alienate people who are parents. On the flipside, parenting content doesn’t only appeal to parents – Ong noted that two-thirds of BuzzFeed readers engaging with parents’ content don’t actually have kids.

“If you want to get higher reach, you’ll have more success when you focus on home content and also what we call ‘rewind’ content so that’s nostalgic, looking back,” she said.

Buzzfeed is looking to target readers on more of a psychographic level rather than traditional demographics. “Millennials, in particular, are really yearning to be recognised as something much more than the consumer bucket that they happen to fall into,” Ong observed.

And she urged marketers to consider what ‘jobs’ content would play in the lives of consumers. “The next time you need to change, adapt or even create a campaign for your product or service, have a think about the job that your product or service is being hired to do in the role of your consumers’ lives.”

Sourced from WARC