Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Liz Cheney fights to hold onto her place in GOP leadership, Jessica Alba IPOs, and brands are realizing Mother’s Day is tough for some. Have a terrific Thursday!
– A Mother’s Day opt-out. Mother’s Day 2021 is nearly upon us, and some brands are recognizing that not everyone wants to be reminded of the occasion.
Parachute, the bedding and bath linens company, sent an email to subscribers in April letting them opt out of marketing about Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
The holiday “can be sensitive times for many of us. So if you’d prefer not to receive emails about these holidays, you can opt out of them here,” the email said, offering a link to a webpage. “You’ll still be kept up to date on everything else, and won’t miss a thing.”
Parachute founder and CEO Ariel Kaye told me the brand has heard from customers who find the occasions triggering. “This is a challenging time for anyone who’s lost a mother or father or who has a strained relationship with their parents,” she said, acknowledging that they can be tough days for individuals trying to conceive too.
Parachute didn’t have the technical capability to offer customized opt-out options in prior years, but given the “tremendous loss and grief in general” of this pandemic era, the company “prioritized figuring out a way” to make it happen, she said. (It required changing email service providers.)
Homemade marketplace Etsy sent an email that offered customers a similar opt-out option in March.
Susan Dobscha, a marketing professor at Bentley University, says the new approach represents “marketers finally realizing they can’t do this one-size-fits-all” strategy. They’ve been “chasing aggregate data, without knowing the context of the data,” she says. And the “relationship between child and mother could not be more contextual and unique.”
Kaye says 2,100 accounts—“a small percentage of subscribers”—opted out of the emails, but “even if it had been one person who opted out, it was worth it.”
You can read the full story here.
Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
The Broadsheet, Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women, is coauthored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman. Today’s edition was curated by Kristen Bellstrom.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Baby's big day. Jessica Alba's Honest Company went public yesterday, with shares popping 40% from their initial trading price of $16 per share to trade above $22 by 3pm. Alba, whose net worth rose by something like $100 million with the IPO, spoke to Fortune's Sheryl Estrada about the company, which she calls her "fourth baby," her role as chief creative officer, and more. Fortune
- History in the making? Liz Cheney isn't succumbing to her GOP colleagues' attempts to oust her from House leadership without a fight. In this Wapo op-ed, she tells her party that "history is watching" as the party fights over embracing Trump's lies about election fraud. Still, it may not do her much good: The No. 2 House Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana has endorsed New York Rep. Elise Stefanik to replace Cheney in the party’s leadership.
- Fashion's ugly side. This investigation, published in partnership with The Fuller Project, chronicles allegations of horrific worker abuse at Hippo Knitting, a Taiwanese company located in the tiny African nation of Lesotho. Women who work at the factory, which supplies Kate Hudson's Fabletics apparel line, describe being sexual assaulted and harassed, humiliated, and verbally abused by supervisors. Fabletics and Hudson say they had no knowledge of the allegations and have suspended all operations with the company; Hippo Knitting's owner says the company is “committed to addressing [the allegations] with the seriousness they deserve.” Time
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: GoDaddy announced that it has hired Michele Lau, formerly of McKesson Corporation, as chief legal officer. Unqork has appointed of Anita Sands to its board.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Funny girls. The latest issue of Variety is dedicated to Hollywood's funniest—and most powerful—women and is packed with stories about Maya Rudolph, Mindy Kaling, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and other comedy icons. I particularly recommend the cover story on Michaela Coel (including the absolutely stunning portraits of the writer/actor/director).
- COVID's other victims. As the latest COVID-19 surge continues to rip through India, community health workers say they feel abandoned and put at risk by the country's government. Many of these workers, who are on the front lines with little PPE, pay or support, are women—"part of a 1 million-strong force of female health workers who serve as a connection between smaller, mostly rural communities and India’s overloaded public health system." Time
- About time. Linklaters LLP, one of London’s elite law firms, is poised to elect the first female senior partner in its 183-year history. The shortlist for the job includes global corporate head Aedamar Comiskey, London corporate and M&A partner Sarah Wiggins, and capital markets partner and western Europe managing partner Claudia Parzani. Bloomberg
ON MY RADAR
Podcast host and author Anna Sale wants to help you have that money conversation that you’ve been avoiding Fortune
Meghan to publish children's book based on husband Harry and son Archie Reuters
The artist upending photography's brutal racist legacy New York Times
PARTING WORDS
"I wanted a heroine who made the affirmative decision to face hardship, to face the danger, to face the challenges, and not because she didn’t have a choice, but because she made the decision that it was worth the risk. We sometimes avail ourselves of the excuse that we didn’t have a choice. It’s that decision to do it anyway, to act anyway, to risk failure, to risk loss. Sometimes we just have to choose to act, never knowing if it’s going to work or not. We have to act."
