Kelley Murray Skoloda, a partner at communications agency Ketchum, estimates that 90 percent of the brand marketing strategies she has helped to develop for clients such as Kellogg's, Kimberly-Clark and Libby's, have been aimed at women. But they are not the stay-at-home moms of decades past who cleaned their kitchens while wearing dresses and pearls.

Because a majority of women now work outside the home while juggling family responsibilities, few of them have time to absorb traditional commercial messages, said Ms. Skoloda, who has worked in Ketchum's Pittsburgh office for more than two decades. Her research on that phenomenon led to her book, "Too Busy to Shop: Marketing to 'Multi-Minding' Women" that was published in March.

Q: What is "multi-minding"?

A: It's not just multitasking, but actually mentally juggling the many dimensions of life. I was doing some research at Ketchum about five years ago asking women how busy they are. We had a theory that women have become so busy that they don't have time for commercial messages to seep in anymore. We found, indeed, that women in the age group 25 to 54 are multi-minding to a higher degree than any of the other populations we looked at, including younger women, older women and men. I started to use the term to describe some of our research, and it stuck with clients. It's an easy term to grab on to, I think.

Q: What are women minding besides what's on their desktop at the moment?

A: Everything from what they're doing at work to what's for dinner, the kids' activity schedules, health-care decisions and taking care of parents or children who aren't in school. They could be thinking about the flowers they're going to have to pick up and plant this weekend or what has to happen at the house. There are a million iterations of what they're thinking about.

Q: Do men ever multi-mind? After all, more of them are involved in child-rearing and household tasks as increasing numbers of women enter the work force.

A: Yes, men do, but to a much lower degree than women. Ketchum's research shows women ages 25 to 54 are 31 percent more likely than men to say they juggle a lot of tasks and 22 percent more likely to say they juggle a lot of thoughts. [In that same age group], 74 percent of women agree there are many things competing for their attention at the same time, compared with 60 percent of men; and 61 percent of women say they "constantly feel pulled in different directions" compared with 36 percent of the men.

There does seem to be more involvement from fathers in family activities as women have taken on more work outside of the home. Many studies say women still bear the majority of the home and family care responsibility.

Q: What do businesses have to do to reach these women?

A: Probably the theme that rose to the top throughout the book was a focus on treating your female consumer as if you're in a relationship with her, not marketing to her. Incorporate things you would do in a relationship: exceed her expectations, surprise her, be passionate and have consistency.

It's not just a one-shot deal. You don't just launch a new product or new hair salon and never come in contact with her again. You can create a relationship online or offline. You're engaged in some give and take by listening to what she has to say, taking that input into consideration and then plowing that back into your marketing.

A few years ago you came up with a new product through research, marketed it the way marketers determined to be the best way, and then you took it out to the consumer. Now the consumer wants to be very engaged in that whole process.

Q: So is the Web much more effective at getting the attention of multi-minders?

A: A lot of it's done online and that's where social media like Facebook and Twitter come in. Kodak, for instance, has a chief blogger. She's online every day getting input from women and men on what they want to see with new products or new printers. That give and take is helping companies design and market their products differently.

Q: Is the era of surveying people over the phone dead?

A: I think it depends on the generation you're trying to reach. If you're targeting boomers, boomers grew up using the phone. I just saw research that said Generation Y and some of Gen X don't use the phone. They don't even return voice mail messages. With texting, they don't talk on the phone anymore.

Q: You're a mother of two children in addition to being a partner at Ketchum and an author. Is it safe to assume you're a multi-minder?

A: Absolutely. Anything I'm doing I feel like my mind is doing double duty or triple duty. If I'm in the car in the morning, I also am listening to the news, thinking about what's for dinner, what's in my pantry and what I can possibly put together before the kids have to go to baseball. I'm thinking about preparing for my first meeting. I'll check my BlackBerry when I'm stopped at a light, and I'll usually make a phone call or two to check on something. And I'm preparing for the next couple of hours or the next day to make sure all those bases are covered.

Q: How did you find time to write the book?

A: I couldn't have written a book about architecture or something completely removed from my job. I'm simply too busy. But the fact that I was doing this research for my work made my job double duty. It all came together. I could accomplish a personal goal of writing a book and leverage what I was doing in my work life. Ketchum was really supportive, and they are helping to market it; but I wrote it 95 percent on my own time. I added personal commitment and time to make it happen.

Q: Describe yourself as a manager.

A: Flexible but disciplined in getting the job done. I think there are lots of different ways you can get a job done. At the end of the day, we still have to produce results here. In your real life, you still want the result of raising good kids but how we get there is different for everyone.

Q: How are Ketchum and the public relations industry in general surviving the recession? Aren't marketing and communications typically among the first casualties in an economic downturn?

A: We are a top 10 agency globally. We were acquired by Omnicom Group in 1996. Ketchum laid off about 20 people in the first quarter across our entire global network. (Ketchum has 23 offices worldwide including Pittsburgh and seven others in the United States).

As an agency we've retained all of our top clients. But clients are spending relatively less compared with a year ago. The decision to turn on new projects is a longer process. And I've heard a lot of people comment that major marketers are turning to PR as a more effective way to market. Clearly, advertising is down significantly, but PR is down not as significantly.

Q: How do you personally relieve stress and the demands of juggling work and the rest of life?

A: I don't know that there is any relief from it. Once I check one thing off my mental list, something else sort of floats in there and replaces it.

I try to work out. A good workout has a way of temporarily reducing that or refreshing your capacity to deal with it.

And I have a great husband who partners with me in all the craziness. We go back and forth with the priorities of the day.