ZenBusiness: Moms Mean Business

JOAN Creative & ZenBusiness

3.5 Million moms exited the workforce during the pandemic. JOAN Creative and ZenBusiness worked to bring them back…on their own terms.

The Campaign

ZenBusiness "Moms Mean Business" Campaign by JOAN Creative

Describe the brief or inspiration behind your campaign? What was your team tasked with?

3.5 Million moms exited the workforce during the pandemic. We worked to bring them back…on their own terms.

ZenBusiness has helped thousands start, run, and grow their own business. When they needed to expand their audience, we identified an audience and community that badly needed them – the millions of moms who were forced out of the workforce during Covid. The message: instead of going back to work for the companies that failed you, start a new kind of company — one that works on your terms. This supported a hard-hitting promotion of a free LLC to every mom in America, with ongoing support from ZenBusiness.

Audiences are more than the buyers, users, decision-makers. They're the entrepreneurs-in-the-making, the people with dreams and ambition, and yes, even the moms.
Chris Turney, Head of New Business & Marketing, JOAN Creative

Walk us through your process. What steps did you take to bring your idea to life?

Ideation
We knew moms were tired of the same supportive blather coming from brands, so it was essential that we did something meaningful for them. Therefore the primary activation of this program was the real offer of a free LLC to every mom in America. We developed a social-first media strategy, launching the program in organic social, then supporting it with paid media as people began to recommend the program for the moms they knew. Our whole 360 campaign was designed to prompt a reaction. To resonate with women, the film approach reflected a side of their experience that often gets sanitized, driven by a literal and figurative drum beat taking you along her journey, to better reflect on your own. All under the rallying cry “Start a business. Change the world.”

What was the business challenge of your project, and why was it important to solve it now?

Challenges
With plateauing performance marketing, we had to prove “brand marketing” can attract new customers without sacrificing any of the efficiency of our “performance marketing” machine. Outspent in a competitive field, ZenBusiness needed to widen its prospective audience to grow the business. Doing so meant an unsustainably higher CAC, until we found an untapped audience in plain sight: the millions of moms forced out of the workforce during the COVID pandemic.

How did you ensure that your project remained true to the idea and on brand all the way from brief to launch?

Execution
Speed and cultural urgency was actually a gift in keeping the idea true to the brand. The pandemic's effect on women in the workforce meant ZenBusiness had to act quickly. The brand believes in helping entrepreneurs not only start their small businesses, but be successful at them. This mission kept us true to the idea of really putting our money where out mouth was and giving moms something meaningful, rather than empty platitudes. We were able to move quickly and nimbly, getting the offer in place, activating communities of Moms, and launching our anthem and supporting social campaigns.

How did the final product meet or exceed your expectations? What results did you see?

Results
“Moms Mean Business” cracked open the world of entrepreneurship and busted the narrow perception of who can thrive in it, creating ZenBusiness’ most successful marketing campaign ever. While we achieved our key goal of growing our customer base at an extraordinarily-efficient CAC, we also accomplished a more awe-inspiring goal. The face of entrepreneurship in America is changing thanks to “Moms Mean Business”.

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Describe your process for creating award winning B2B work. How is creativity at the center of how you work?

As with B2C, award-winning work starts with a true understanding of the audience, both the current and prospectives. Audiences are more than the buyers, users, decision-makers. They’re the entrepreneurs-in-the-making, the people with dreams and ambition, and yes, even the moms. Being able to really understand your audience’s unspoken desires is just as important, if not more so, in the B2B world as it is B2C. They’re. the north star we work with our brands to stand for and to reach in disruptive ways.

Similarly, culture is often an undervalued tool for B2B brands. For ZenBusiness, understanding the changing dynamics of the pandemic workforce, but also what it meant for the future culture of work at large, was a crucial red thread throughout our campaign development.