Home Made Simple
Home Made Simple is a lifestyle brand that features tips, advice and ideas for the home primarily on its website, TV show and through email. It is supported by the Procter & Gamble brands: Cascade, Dawn, Febreze, Gain Ultra, Mr. Clean, and Swiffer.
Home Made Simple is what marketers call a cohort site,[1] a website that promotes a product or multiple products by providing helpful information, like recipes and tips, not solely advertising and marketing messages.
Website and emails
Home Made Simple began in 2000 as a sponsored content microsite developed and launched on the Women.com Network. In 2001, after the purchase of Women.com by iVillage, P&G brought the program in-house and extended it into a CRM email program and website offering "simple, creative ideas and cleaning solutions for women in their homes." [2] Featured content is focused on the following categories:
- Food + Recipes
- Home Organization
- Crafts
- Home Décor
- Holiday + Party
- Gardening
- Cleaning
Home Made Simple distributes regular emails that include featured content, product news, sweepstakes and coupon offers from the sponsoring brands.
Home Made Simple releases a coupon booklet twice a year with coupons promoting the sponsors’ products. The booklet is accessible via television promotions and on the Home Made Simple website.
TV show
In the summer of 2006, the Home Made Simple TV show debuted on the US cable network TLC.[3] It is a weekly home improvement reality show based on the Home Made Simple website. The hosts of the show through Season 8 were Home Maven: Patrick Brown, Decor Maven: Wanda Colon and Cooking Maven: Jamika Pessoa. The featured guest of each week’s show were nominated by their friends or family on the Home Made Simple website. Friends help the featured guest with projects in their home with guidance from the hosts. Common projects on the show are easy meals, minor fix-its, room organization and interior decorating. The Home Mavens share expert tips in each episode. Products from Mr. Clean, Febreze, Dawn, Cascade and Swiffer, the sponsoring brands, are used throughout the show.
The show moved to Oprah Winfrey Network at the start of Season 9. Although OWN would classify this as Season 1 on their network. It debuted on October 23, 2011, and featured two major changes: it was hosted by Paige Davis (former host of Trading Spaces), and 2) The mavens have been replaced with a panel of experts. The new experts include: cooking experts Jesse Brune, Ronnie Woo, Martita Jara, and Ceci Carmichael; design expert Kristan Cunningham; design, planning and cooking expert Tracy Metro; design and carpentry expert Brooks Utley; and architecture expert Kenneth Wingard.
The third season will be shortened to a half-an-hour time slot, with new host Soleil Moon Frye, with an October 2013 premiere.[4]
Book
In 2010, Home Made Simple wrote and published a book through St. Martin's Press (Griffin). The Home Made Simple Book, Fresh Ideas to Make Your Own, includes tips, projects, and recipes for home while providing readers with pages for personalizing projects with their own ideas.
References
- ↑ Forrester.com Archived September 12, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
- ↑ MMA Net Archived October 6, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
- ↑ Worldscreen.com Archived September 27, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
- ↑ Kondolojy, Amanda (July 31, 2013). "Soleil Moon Frye Joins OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network's 'Home Made Simple' as Host for Season Three". TV by the Numbers. Archived from the original on August 20, 2013.