The brands that took the road less travelled this Mother's Day

Mother's Day is a special occasion celebrated around the world to honour and appreciate the incredible mothers in our lives. It's a day dedicated to showing love, gratitude, and recognition for the selfless sacrifices and unwavering support that mothers provide. Brands and companies often take this opportunity to create heart-warming campaigns and initiatives that resonate with the emotions of this special day. 

In our compilation for this year’s Mother’s Day communications for brands, we saw a lot of campaigns that were quite similar in nature. They imagined mothers as altruistic figures with little or no authority who should be revered and appreciated for their sacrifices. Some of them, however, did not take this easy route and came up with new and inventive ways to position the Indian mother while integrating their own brand story into the narrative.

Let's take a closer look at some of the creative and impactful Mother's Day campaigns that caught our attention this year.

Amazon

In celebration of Mother's Day, Amazon created a heart-warming campaign featuring their employees, also known as "Amazonians," and their mothers. This campaign aimed to highlight the strong bond between mothers and their children, showcasing personal stories and anecdotes from Amazon employees. 

The intention behind the campaign was to capture the stories of Amazon's employees as they talk to their mothers. Thus, the campaign subtly integrates Amazon's own brand while praising mothers for their effort in making the employees into who they are - successful, competent individuals who contribute to Amazon's growth story.

Amazon is thus seen as a mother-friendly brand while seemingly being diverse, as employees with physical disabilities are also part of the campaign. The brand, however, carefully chooses not to touch upon the thread of the employee's story about his/her disability, as Amazon is well aware that by not addressing it, the intended message is that the e-commerce giant treats all its employees as equals.

DS Group's Catch Spices

DS Group, the makers of Catch Spices, released a short film titled "Maa Ka Ehsaas" (Mother's Feeling). The film beautifully portrayed the emotional bond between a mother and her child, with a focus on the love and care that goes into preparing food. However, they dialled up the archetype of motherhood in a very unconventional way. They made the protagonist a little more self-sacrificial and altruistic by imagining a sex worker as an 'anonymous' mother. 

We see the story of a mother preparing lunch for her child every day. But she makes sure that she covers her face when she goes to deliver it on the boundary wall of the orphanage due to the social stigma attached to her profession.

The visual signifiers of her profession were the ‘loud’ make-up on her face, the brightly coloured saree that she draped over her and the ‘Gajra’ that she puts in her hair. The physical space that she occupied was also yet another signifier - her house had walls painted with ‘loud’ colours - essentially colours which are high in both intensity and contrast, as opposed to being subtle, which may signify affluence. 

The campaign highlighted the belief that food is not just sustenance but a reflection of a mother's love. The mother is forced to work as a sex worker so she can put food on the table for her child. The brand is subtly integrated into the narrative as she uses Catch Spices to make food for her child. The idea that mothers work selflessly for their children is repeated once again.

Another campaign by Amazon

Yet another campaign by Amazon, the hashtag #DeliverTheLove was at the forefront of a heart-warming campaign that aimed to spread love and joy on Mother's Day. 

This initiative encouraged people to share their love for their mothers by sending personalised messages and gifts, even though they might be far away. The campaign intends to resonate with those who were unable to physically be with their mothers on this special day, providing them with a way to connect and make their mothers feel cherished.

The key message in this video is that a mother cares for her children, even when they ignore her. She prepares meals for her children, spends time with their friends like their own and always is by the children’s side. Yet, the children completely ignore her. The campaign emphasises upon the idea that a mother just wants to spend some time with her children, who are grown-up adults now. It asks the children to express gratitude and appreciation for their mothers, even from a distance.

Towards the end, we hear the voice-over tagline - “Yeh bahaane dibbon mein nahi milenge” (You will not get the excuse of talking to your mother in a gift box). This is an interesting nugget in the campaign, as it is an anthesis of the conventional brand messaging - use our products for happiness. Instead, Amazon insists that the brand is not that important. Instead, it can just act as a messenger towards happiness, but it is not the end-all product.

Unlike the previous campaign featuring Amazon employees, this campaign intends to integrate the brand in a more 'hard’ way since it talks about Amazon as a product/service, not as an inclusive employer.

Air India

Air India also took a unique approach to celebrate Mother's Day with their campaign, #ItsAMomThing. 

The campaign features snippets of real-life influencers from their own cameras, who have captured the essence of who their mothers are and how all mothers feel when their children are going on a trip. Across all cultures, mothers are seen as kind, benevolent and extremely caring, to the point of being anxious about their children. Air India clearly intends to position itself as a global brand after it was bought by Tata.  

It highlighted the various roles that mothers play in our lives and how they often act as our personal "travel agents" when it comes to planning trips and ensuring our comfort. It served as a reminder to appreciate the efforts mothers make to ensure our journeys are smooth and enjoyable.

Zomato

Zomato’s campaign reimagined the app as being run by mothers. They imagined mothers as owners and designers of the app. The reason for associating mothers with Zomato is quite clearly highlighted - the association of mothers with food. Since mothers usually make most of the food in a household, the association highlights the importance and the bond of mothers with food.

It imagines what Zomato would feel and look like if mothers ran the food delivery app. The campaign uses quirky terminologies, mostly puns, to highlight the 'motherly' aspect of the campaign. For instance, the job title of the mother is ‘Chief Mother Officer’; it is a wordplay on the Chief Marketing Officer role that most companies have.

Zomato went further ahead and highlights other things, such as - First and foremost, the app gets renamed to "Mazoto" because “Ma always comes first”. On top of that, Mazoto would get a lot more other features such as a ‘Free GTT combo’ weekly in your cart wherein ‘GTT - Ghiya Tori Tinde’, using coupons such as CLEANROOM25, TIMESEUTHO, etc.

Zomato’s idea was that if moms were the creators of the Zomato app, it would undoubtedly have a unique touch of warmth, care, and attention to detail. It imagines a scenario where moms put their incredible skills and love for cooking into designing the perfect food delivery app. Reviews and ratings on Mazoto would take on a heartfelt twist. Only positive reviews from relatives would be allowed, except reviews from ‘Saasu-Ma’. 

A really hilarious part of the video is when the music stops for a brief while, and the mother goes on a rant, scolding the potential customers as if they are her children in typical ‘mummy fashion’.

The person playing the role of the mother also seems to be a non-actor, which certainly helped the campaign as it gave it a more realistic and authentic touch.

The video is packaged as a marketing video for Zomato, which is a really clever way of doing it. Zomato does not shy away from addressing the fact that it is a marketing campaign. Instead, it zealously embraces that fact and goes all out in making a stereotypical marketing campaign with a twist.

In conclusion, if moms were the creators of the Zomato app, it would be a platform infused with love, attention and a deep understanding of what it means to provide nourishment and comfort through food. 

Actionable insights:

• While Zomato imagined the mother in a position of power, most brands are still largely using the theme of the altruistic and caregiving mother. They could certainly change things up by giving the mother a little more agency.
• A lot of brands are still putting mothers on the pedestal, which is something that we usually end up doing on Mother’s Day. However, brands can also humanise them by showing that mothers can also make mistakes and do need support sometimes.
• Brands could have also tapped into the nostalgic aspect of the mother-child relationship by portraying how the relationship has changed over the years.
• By portraying elderly mothers as vulnerable due to their frail health, brands can integrate themselves into the picture by acting as agents for old-age health issues.

Brands must remember that Mother's Day is not just about mothers but also children who need to rise up to the occasion to provide support to their parents after a certain age. Parents, who in most cases, had provided unflinching support to their children in spite of all the hardships in life that they went through.