Mother’s Day Marketing Campaigns: The Best & The Worst

While it isn’t the biggest day in the commercial calendar, Mother’s Day still presents marketers with an opportunity to both promote their brand and make money.

We take a look at how two well-known names have been using March 15th 2015 to raise awareness about their offering...

Our Favourite: Penguin

In response to Penguin’s #YourMum campaign, Martin Belam tweeted:

"Somewhere a social media guru is already writing a thinkpiece on how #YourMum turned out to be the campaign of the year"

And here I am. 

Now, I don’t think that #YourMum is set to be the biggest marketing campaign of the year, nor do I think it’s necessarily the best, but it certainly generated a lot of social engagement...

To celebrate Mother’s Day (and encourage people to buy a book for their mums), Penguin asked users to tweet them with the hashtag #YourMum. Yes…the same line used by juvenile adolescents. Perhaps not the most fitting phrase for such a respected brand to piggyback, but they did. And the results? Well, the hashtag was hijacked by over 7,000 people, with users repurposing the well-intentioned campaign as an opportunity to share crass “Your Mum” jokes.

If Penguin set out to generate brand awareness and increase their social engagement then they well and truly succeeded. That said, they probably just wanted to sell a few books….

Our Least Favourite: Interflora

The Mummy of all flower delivery companies, Interflora has gone for the predictably “fluffy” approach for their Mother’s Day campaign.

Running video and pre-roll ads as well as flash banners, Interflora has yet again positioned themselves as the perfect option for Mother’s Day. Comparing Mums to flowers, Interflora said: “flowers can often be taken for granted and overlooked when it comes to what they stand for…”.

While Interflora will probably generate more Mother’s Day sales than Penguin, we don’t think their campaign will generate much conversation.