The coming weekend heralds our annual celebration of all things maternal. 24-hours dedicated to the women that brought us into the world, and for clever companies a great opportunity to boost sales and leverage additional exposure.
Sadly, though, not everyone knows how to do Mother’s Day right. In fact, you could argue there are more firms out there aiming their budgets off-target than on. This month’s newsletter opens with a story all about the gender-bias of the media, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the public-facing media spend of major brands. Despite the fact it’s 2016, so many businesses seem obsessed with traditional taught roles of women as care givers and housekeepers, which then directs advertising. Especially at this time of year.
In our opinion, that’s inappropriate.
So there’s plenty of room for improvement. But what about the brands that go beyond these common mistakes, and come out with an attention seeking Mother’s Day campaign that achieves the opposite of their goal- pushing customers so far in the other direction they might as well be signposting rivals? Well, there are plenty of them, with copious examples on the internet, if you look hard enough.
Don’t believe us? Here are a few of the worst Mother’s Day fails…
Your mum

Last year, publishing behemoth Penguin Books decided to launch a social media campaign. In return for engagement, the company was offering people advice on what to buy their mums to show they cared. Sadly, though, some clever clogs opted to use Twitter as a platform for this campaign, asking the public to tweet using #yourmum – potentially the worst hashtag since #susanalbum went viral for the wrong reasons. We shouldn’t have to explain what the response here looked like, with lewd, rude, and just plain sarcastic comments abound.
The alluring mum

It’s also amazing to think that a shop in Glasgow, Famous When Dead, has decided to jump on 2016’s Mother’s Day bandwagon via what must be an international first, and the least appropriate greetings card in the history of greetings cards (probably). Imagine waking up on Sunday to receive a card from your child which labels you a MILF? It’s the kind of thing that should never happen, but the retailer hopes will.
The dishonest mum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVI4B5cg1ag
Shocking and truly misguided, those two pale into insignificance when compared with our third, final, and most ridiculously off-colour instance. Turning the clock back to 2014, and relocating our story to Spain, clothing company Desigual came up with something truly mindblowing. This advert, which is difficult to track down online- presumably because the PR team have gone to great lengths removing any trace- begins all smiles and positivity, before the leading lady, who really wants to be a mum, starts sabotaging the pack of condoms she is presumably taking home to use with her other half, thus implying she’s about to trap the unseen man by getting pregnant ‘accidentally’.
Yeah, we’re not sure what to say either, other than this: nobody should ever, ever take inspiration from these.