Mother’s Day Case Study | How to stand out through marketing?

Editor's note: Every Mother's Day, the Moments seem to become a gathering place for showing off motherly love, gifts, children, etc. Some people may find it annoying, but for marketing planners, it's great! This article will introduce to you how to take advantage of Mother's Day marketing to stand out.

Mother's Day is a holiday dedicated to mothers. With the development of online marketing, Mother's Day has become more and more celebrated with a sense of ritual. Many brands have even made Mother's Day an important marketing node.

Using Mother's Day as a node for topic marketing not only has a clear audience, but also makes it easier to create hot topics and attract fans' attention and discussion. In an era where traffic is king, if brands want to successfully break through the circle of Mother's Day marketing, they must expand new perspectives and establish a new discourse system.

Based on deep insights into social phenomena and starting from users’ immediate pain points, we accurately approach the issue based on different attitudes and progressively build a new discourse system for Mother’s Day marketing. Let’s take a look at how major brands are leveraging Mother’s Day to launch topic marketing!

1. PROYA - Visible only to mothers

PROYA launched a video on Mother's Day this year: [Only visible to moms]. The main point of the video is: starting from the common details in the family, borrowing the perspective of young mothers, to explore "whether housework has gender attributes", hoping to remind the audience that family responsibilities have nothing to do with roles, and should be shared by everyone in the family, and the mother's efforts should be appreciated.

The video received 4.5 million views in three days. The text of the video resonated strongly with female audiences and conveyed the idea that their work should not be taken for granted. One Weibo user commented: "Finally, a brand understands what mothers want to see."

In addition to releasing the video, PROYA also launched a "Family Affairs Planner" refrigerator magnet set and carried out interactive marketing on Weibo, randomly giving the set to 100 friends who left Mother's Day wishes in the forwarding area.

The Household Affairs Planner fits in with the theme of this marketing campaign and translates the awareness of sharing housework from an appeal to an action level.

In fact, PROYA has always targeted women as its users, and it is also a veteran in marketing to the female market, especially in terms of narratives for local audiences. In terms of exploring gender equality, its previous campaign [Gender is not a boundary, prejudice is] became a hot topic on Women's Day last year.

This is in stark contrast to many other beauty brands that launch special gift boxes or discounts during this festival. It can be seen that the PROYA brand is more focused on consolidating and conveying its brand value and image by focusing on social issues.

2. Babycare: Dad takes care of the baby

The short film "Dad Taking Care of Baby" released by Babycare on Mother's Day originated from an interview the brand conducted with passers-by mothers. During the interview, one mother said, "I want to have a day of time for myself."

In response to this, the brand combined "time" and teamed up with rapper @Ｂ瑞吉_bridge RAP to make a strong confession, which resulted in a video like this - "Dad takes care of the baby, mom is happy."

In addition, Babycare's move to rename the "mother and baby rooms" previously set up in public places as "nurseries" has also won the hearts of many mothers.

Babycare's Mother's Day marketing campaign also fits the brand's main product users - parents.

3. Meituan Takeaway - Mom loves flowers, we love her

When the advertisement is about content that all groups like to see and hear, the marketing is half successful. Meituan Waimai’s topic “Mom loves flowers, we love her” is very interesting, does not contain any content that causes group misunderstandings, and does not create identity conflicts. Both elders and juniors are willing to pay attention to it, and it is also the most suitable advertisement to be forwarded to family groups.

The topic of "Flower Delivery" abandoned the traditional sensational propaganda points and showed the "shortcomings" of mothers in terms of content. It was both earthy and real, creating a great image of mothers and making everyone feel that this is a real mother that we are all familiar with. It not only restored the real life scenes, but also resonated with users and brought them closer.

4. Tmall Global - Reverse Foster Mom Guide

On Mother's Day, Tmall Global launched the topic "Love Translation Post" on Weibo, inviting every young person to become a translator for their mother. Do you know what mothers often say, "I don't lack anything", "Mom doesn't like to eat this", "I have everything"? Also, mothers often say "Don't play with your phone all the time", which actually means that they want you to spend more time with her after translation.

At the same time, Tmall International released the "Young People's Reverse Raising Mom Picture Book" on its WeChat official account, allowing the children to arrange every detail of their mother's life from morning to night, exchanging roles and becoming "mom's mother", which also triggered discussions among users.

It is obvious that Tmall Global is very popular among young people. Tmall Global has insight into the trends of "health consumption" and "national trend consumption" among young consumer groups and has launched targeted marketing activities many times. Relevant data shows that the scale of China's health care products market in 2020 has exceeded one trillion yuan, among which the post-90s generation who love health and emo, love hard work and love Buddhism have become the main force of consumption.

In order to improve user experience, increase user loyalty, and solve the problem of post-90s consumers reading overseas health products, Tmall Global has been continuously upgrading the "Chinese Translation Stickers" since last Spring Festival. During the Spring Festival, it also launched the 1.0 version of the Chinese Translation Stickers, and distributed DIY stickers that can be written on labels, customized stickers, etc., to make the product style and brand tone clearer.

V. Conclusion

Festival marketing is a battleground for many brands. How can they stand out from the crowd of homogeneous marketing? Looking at the successful Mother's Day marketing cases above, many brands have abandoned grand propositions and turned to establishing a discourse system that is specific to each individual. Brand marketing is no longer limited to simply praising the greatness and sacrifice of mothers, but rather understanding the social phenomena behind it, paying attention to the situation of the mother group, and truly getting close to the pain points. The more accurate the insight, the more stable the effect.

The new discourse system requires advancement in creativity. In the context of various brands playing the "warmth" safety card, each brand can find the right gameplay based on its own demands to occupy the user's mind more deeply and improve the brand's favorability and conversion rate. Hot spots, topics, platforms, interactions, and cross-circle linkages are all tried and tested methods.

In the long run, companies can use their brand voice to lead the public to pay attention to the situation of mothers, which will help to construct new social phenomena, lead social trends, and thus shape the brand image, which will be beneficial to the long-term development of the brand.

Author: Darou; WeChat public account: Jingxing Interactive