ThinkOTB Agency

A Mother’s Touch: Mother’s Day Marketing

March 10, 2015

This Sunday 15th March its Mother’s Day. So, we thought what better time to celebrate all things mums and marketing…

Like many a celebration, Mother’s Day is the perfect opportunity to launch a seasonal campaign . Every year Mother’s Day sparks a shopping frenzy as consumers scramble to buy chocolates, flowers and other gifts to impress their mothers each year. Yet aside from the shopping rush, Mother’s Day marketing has been known to create some iconic mother-inspired campaigns. This week, we wanted to share some of our favourites with you. Cue the mums.

IKEA One Room Paradise:

Ikea are well known for their creative and fun-filled advert, and the One Room Paradise advert makes no exception to the rule. Launched in 2013 as part of its ‘Make Small Spaces Big’ campaign, the One Room Paradise sees a little girl playing with a dolls house in which the characters come alive, dancing around their compact apartment with Aretha Franklin as a soundtrack.

The advert is beautifully simple. It shows a clearly endearing relationship between the dolls – a young single mother and her son and occasionally the grandmother. It’s a somewhat surprisingly emotional advert for a company selling furniture. Ikea have created a fantastic campaign filled with mother’s love.

P&G Olympics:

P&G created a show-stopping display of Mother’s Day love in their ‘Proud Sponsors of Moms’ campaign in 2012. The ads were launched in association with the Olympic Games. P&G are signed up to sponsor the next 5 games with mums at the heart of the campaign. Ads are based on the premise that nearly every household in the UK has at least one P&G brand. 19 of P&G’s billion dollar brands are marketed in the UK, they have a big impact on our lives.

P&G have said that ‘for more than 80 years in the UK, Mum has been our boss. Mums have driven our innovation and our marketing. So we are using our voice to celebrate and reward mums and recognise the sacrifices that all mums make to help their children to grow and succeed.’ The Sochi 2014 Thank You Mom advert was released almost one year ago now. It has reached over 20 million hits on YouTube! It remains one of the best loved Mum adverts of all time.

British Airways: A ticket to visit Mum

‘Home is where your mum is’, is the centre of British Airways India’s marketing campaign. Launched in July 2013, they began to advertise flights from North America to India and again on Mother’s Day 2014. The Ticket to Visit Mum campaign, featuring ex-pat Ratnesh as he surprises his mum by visiting her in India. This is his first trip home, 15 years after he moved to New York City.

In an emotional but sensitively shot video the two are reunited by their British Airways flight. The ad ends with the tag line ‘It’s never been just about flying’. The video of Ratnesh and his mum achieved 1.2 million views on YouTube, over 56 million Twitter impressions and over 127,000 shares on Facebook in its first release. They have since launched a further series of videos as part of the same campaign.

Happy Mother’s Day from everyone here at OTB! We hope our run down of our favourite Mother’s Day marketing campaigns have inspired you to do something special for your mum this weekend.

Want to find out how you can take your advertising to the next level? Get in touch with Think OTB.