In January of this year, Care.com listed its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. Care.com is a basically an e-commerce website for baby-sitters. Rather than dealing with word-of-mouth referrals or asking your niece or nephew who may not know how to boil a pot of water, Care.com gives parents a chance to scope out their baby-sitter ahead of time. The industry of full-time nannies and dedicated baby-sitters is booming and Care.com jumped on it early, making the lives of parents easier and more assured.
While watching major cable news networks over the last couple of weeks, I have noticed the commercial where Care.com's CEO, Sheila Marcelo, is ringing the opening bell of the NYSE on the day of the company's IPO. The advertisement can be seen here. Essentially, Marcelo is talking about how happy she is that Care.com has been such a success, how she is living the American dream, etc. It is definitely a great story, especially given that probably not very many people would have thought that she could have taken this company public when she first came up with the idea.
The story is all well and good, but the interesting thing to me in this advertisement is that it is actually a NYSE advertisement. The closing image is of the NYSE logo, but the whole focus is on Care.com.
So why is this significant?
Listen carefully to the messaging that Marcelo uses when she is talking. Love, caring, live, reliable, perfect. Those are all words that Marcelo and Care.com wants associated with their brand for obvious reasons. But the NYSE wants to draw off of that positivity of the Care.com mantra, whether that is explicitly stated or not. The association factor is key here for the NYSE as - let's be honest here - nobody will use any of the above adjectives to describe its brand.
The finance industry is still suffering an image issue following the financial crisis of the past few years. By highlighting the success of a company like Care.com, with a founder who even describes herself as "living the American dream", the NYSE humanizes its brand. It helps dispel the myth that anyone involved in the process is a white male in a stiff suit who only cares about tax breaks and bigger dividends.
Care.com and the NYSE is a natural pairing from a branding perspective in this regard. Both have something to gain - Care.com gets great national exposure, particularly to a more affluent audience that will help generate greater revenue and the NYSE gets to highlight a lovable brand with a founder who is the antithesis of the public's perception of the exchange.
It may be subtle, but I think that both come out ahead in this instance. It isn't going to dispel the belief that the stock exchange is the epitome of greed, but it is one smart step in that direction.
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