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Kimberly-Clark has a new relationship Web site that's designed to get its Huggies brand name in front of expectant mothers long before they have to make their first diaper purchase.

The Huggies Baby Network, which went live on the Internet May 20, is the primary tactic in a $7 million campaign to raise visibility of the No. 2 disposable diaper brand in the United States. The site aims to earn the trust of pregnant moms prior to purchase by offering them expert advice, content from other birth- and baby-related sites, and interactive tools.

“We are striving to enhance our equity with consumers,” said Mark Cammarota, Kimberly-Clark's director for baby care marketing. “It's about making a more meaningful emotional connection with visitors — not only with those who are using our products, but with moms from the moment they learn they're pregnant. That's the moment when they're really hungry for information.”

Research has revealed that more than half of expectant and new mothers say they have not identified one major source of information about pregnancy on the Web, Cammarota said. So the company saw that as an opening for a wide-ranging informational Web site that can both answer mothers' questions and build customer relationships that may pay off in sales months down the road.

The new site replaces two previous Web pages that essentially separated the product and content functions, www.huggies.com and the unbranded www.parentstages.com. Huggies diapers are just one of 17 toiletry product lines Kimberly-Clark sells to parents; others include pull-up training pants, baby soaps and body-care items. That wider competitive front makes it all the more vital to move away from a hard sell based on products and into a softer marketing effort based on community and problem-solving.

“We're pretty confident that if we make that connection to moms, then loyalty to the brand is going to translate when they're out doing their shopping and deciding what items they buy,” Cammarota said.

Visitors to the main Huggies Baby Network site can choose from an area offering pregnancy-related information or another section dedicated to dealing with babies and toddlers. Each segment has content and activities specific to mothers' needs at that stage of her life. The “Happy & Healthy Pregnancy” site features advice from medical experts in both text and streaming audio, as well as articles from content partners such as American Baby, iParenting and Today's Parent that change weekly. Mothers also can sign up using their expected due date to receive articles via e-mail newsletter that specifically target their pregnancy trimester.

A “Sharing Space” forum allows moms who register at the site to get advice from other mothers. And they can e-mail questions to Sandi and Marcie Jones, two published authors on the subject of pregnancy.

Perhaps most innovative on the new Huggies Baby Network site are the online activities. Mothers can use templates to create a scrapbook of their pregnancy and birth, complete with digital photos. Multiple versions of these books can be saved online and then either printed out or e-mailed to others.

After their pregnancy is confirmed, one of the chief concerns for expectant mothers is designing the nursery, Cammarota said. So the Huggies site contains an online “Virtual Room Creator” that lets parents design a nursery, including sizing the room, adding and moving furniture, inserting windows and selecting patterns for the walls, curtains and bed linens. Room designs can be saved and printed out.

Finally, parents and parents-to-be can tab to an online “Activities Playhouse” that lets them search for things to do during pregnancy or with their child from a list of 128 activities. The searches can be conducted by keyword, by the child's age or by the specific skill the parent wants to develop. Once again, they can be saved for future retrieval.

“We had some activities [on the former Huggies.com site] and some information content on Parentstages,” Cammarota said. “But this really brings it to a whole new level of significance for parents.” His division did about a year of research into what women need on the “journey to motherhood,” and that's where tools like the virtual room creator originated.

“Thinking about the baby's room is enjoyable, but it's also a challenge and can become a source of anxiety,” he said. “We wanted to help take that anxiety away and make it more of a fun activity. It's the kind of thing that a new mom is looking for.”

Registrations at the site are used to customize the page for the mother, changing content to suit either her due date or the age of her child. The mother of a newborn infant might sign on and see content related to bathing a baby, for example, while someone with a toddler would be more likely to see articles about child-proofing the home.

The weekly e-mail newsletter sends out the same mix of targeted articles and expert advice under the Huggies logo, together with some special offers on products and discount coupons. Visitors also can sign up separately to receive offers, coupons and Huggies product news.

Cammarota said the company plans to drive traffic to the site through affiliate marketing, direct mail, freestanding inserts and product packaging featuring the Huggies Baby Network's URL.