“While some believe a bath is just a time to clean your baby, at the Johnson’s Brand, we believe bath time is a time for more. It is a time for more bonding, more learning, and more sensory stimulation, which means engaging your baby’s senses through sight, touch, sound and smell.”—Video description for Johnson’s So Much More campaign
 
As any new parent knows, newborns and toddlers can be very demanding…but they can always benefit from even more interaction. Johnson & Johnson (J&J), the baby care market leader in the US, launched a global campaign earlier this year to raise awareness of the importance of bath time.  
 
The campaign, which is intended to bring awareness to new parents and parents-to-be, coincides with the release of a recent global poll named Global Bath Time Report.
 
“[The report] aligns with our global campaign even more now, enhancing bath time specifically,” stated Kelly Gottfried, senior director of marketing, J&J. “The Bath Time Report revealed the magic that most parents didn’t know, that bath time is important in baby sensorial stimulation and cognitive development.”
 
The poll, sponsored by J&J and conducted online by Harris Poll in November, surveyed more than 3,500 parents (aged 21 and older) of infants through 3 year-olds in Brazil, Canada, China, India, Philippines, UK, and the US—all key markets for J&J. According to Gottfried, these countries are also representative of the different regions in which they’re located, giving a picture of regional bath time perceptions.
 
Data collected from the poll was used to create the Global Bath Time Report. “[This report] illustrates the many similarities around the globe, such as agreement that [bath time] is a special moment of bonding between parent and infant, but also the different rituals; i.e., time of day and length of bath time; and levels of understanding among parents as to the importance of bath time,” stated Gottfried.
 
Survey results revealed several aspects concerning parental and infant interaction. Concerning brain development, for example, 69% and 52% of parents said that talking and eye contact, respectively, are extremely important to their child’s brain development. However, fewer than 32% and 34%, respectively, viewed talking and eye contact as extremely important during bath time.
 
While 90% of respondents agreed that bath time was “a special activity,” “quality time,” or “a bonding experience,” only 42% said that bath time is extremely important to their child’s brain development (compared to 23% who said it’s not important).
 
Regarding sensorial stimulation (touch and smell, specifically), 14% of survey respondents said that baby massage is not important at all to their child’s brain development and an even larger percentage (36%) said that fragranced products (vs. fragrance-free) are not an important part of bath time.
 
These opinions, coupled with the fact that the average global bath time is 23 minutes, 6 times a week (or nearly 10 hours a month)—a significant amount of time for an infant—can’t be neglected. This is the stance of J&J and the reason behind the So Much More campaign.
 
“We wanted to get research out and publicize it and let parents know that our focus is on ongoing research,” said Gottfried.
 
Grounded in Research
 
As a leading manufacturer in the global baby care product market—a market projected to be worth $66.8 billion by 2017—and a pioneer of baby skin research, J&J has more than 120 years of experience in the field. In addition, J&J asserts to have “published more clinical research on baby’s skin than any other global skin care company over the last five years,” and has also been the first to show baby’s skin development from birth, and the first to evaluate baby skin care products across different ethnicities and continents. In addition, J&J collaborates with dozens of midwives and pediatric skin care, bonding, sleep and behavior experts around the world.
 
J&J’s campaign is intended to raise parents’ awareness of the correlation between bath time habits and positive infant development. Some of the research that is propelling the campaign forward involves sensorial stimulation such as touching, smelling and talking as critical components of sensorial and cognitive development. For example, infants who received routine touch and massage were likely not only to display improved cognitive performance, increased alertness and attentiveness, but were also 50% more likely to make eye contact—an early form of communication. This is compared to children who received minimal touch, exhibiting cognitive and developmental delays, aggression and sleep disturbances.
 
These findings are particularly important to keep in mind for new parents, as Johnson Brand reports that by age 3, 85% of the child’s brain has already been formed.
 
Panel Discussion
 
Officially, So Much More began in February with a panel discussion hosted by J&J in each of the six surveyed countries and consisted of renowned experts in the areas of touch, scent, and brain development in each respective country. The US panel, which was hosted by Lisa Ling, journalist and host of CNN's This is Life with Lisa Ling, included Lynn Erdman, CEO, Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN); Dr. Andrew Meltzoff, co-director, Institute of Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington; Dr. Kumar Vedantam, VP-technology & applications (North America), Givaudan; and David A. Mays, senior director, global scientific engagement, skin care, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies, Inc. According to Gottfried, “each person weighed in according to his or her area of expertise, going into further depth of the Bath Time Report statistics and assertions.”
 
Ling spoke of her own personal experiences with her family and bath time. The overall takeaway, according to Gottfried, was that while most parents see bath time as a special moment (84% of the respondents say it is “the best quality time” with a child, 64% say it is “a tech-free family time”), they simply don’t associate it with cognitive development. “It is something every parent can take advantage of to stimulate their child’s development, something that will benefit them for years to come,” she stated.
 
The panel is having an impact, according to the J&J executive.
 
“Already, [the campaign] is outperforming all the benchmarks and goals. Overall, we are very pleased with the results so far and the level of consumer engagement. It’s an intuitive message for mom’s, it’s easy to talk about and share with friends; this is gaining a lot of momentum,” said Gottfried.
 
The results are supported and gauged through sales, but also through social engagement and mentions, which, in the social media world are “likes,” “forwards,” and recommends.”
 
To help the campaign continue to grow, J&J has also partnered with Baby Center, a parenting and pregnancy digital resource with a global, monthly reach of more than 40 million moms (16 million in the US alone).
 
Though unable to comment on the dollar value of J&J’s total campaign investment, Gottfried stated that “J&J supports, and will continue to support, the campaign financially across all media channels.”
 
In addition, J&J has committed millions of dollars over the next three years to advance research on multi-sensorial experiences for positive infant development. According to Gottfried, there are no new products being introduced with this campaign. “Our emphasis is to show what role our existing products perform,” she stated.
 
Globally, the Johnson Brand estimates that approximately eight billion baths are given annually using Johnson’s products. This bodes well for the Johnson brand if it can keep pace with the growing market. The baby hair care, skin care, and toiletries markets are all expected grow through 2017 due to increased baby populations in developing nations, where parents’ disposable income is on the rise. This, in addition to the average age increase for parents, to a level where they are considered more financially stable, provides support for an expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34.7% in the EMEA region alone.
 
“We hope that parents choose Johnson’s as a partner in their bath time ritual and that they will incorporate these rituals into their routines to begin to see their infant’s development,” stated Gottfried.