This Mother's Day, on behalf of hardworking, multifaceted moms everywhere and American Greetings (a company built on meaningful connections), we set out to properly honor their important role by getting people to see Mom in a different light.
So to get to that truth, we told a lie.
We created a fake job description based on everything moms do and placed ads for it online and in newspapers. Then we interviewed real people. The result was a video embraced by over 22 million YouTube viewers, who experienced laughs,and tears, and discovered a newfound appreciation for what might just be the world's toughest job.
With Mother's Day right around the corner, we needed a fresh way to make our target audience (women age 35 – 45) not only think of but truly appreciate their mothers. If we were successful they would end up sending them a Mother's Day card through Cardstore.com. Our insight was that even though moms have the toughest job in the world, we don't really treat it like a real job. But what if we did? What if we came up with a way to show the world all the things moms do by creating a fake job? And what if we advertised that job online, in newspapers and then conducted interviews that would end up on YouTube? And that's precisely what we did.
The YouTube video immediately caught on and became an overnight viral success. With no paid media support, the YouTube video achieved almost six million views in the first two days. It also became the #1 Trend on Facebook, the #1 Worldwide Trending Video on YouTube, a Top 10 Trend on Twitter and the most shared article in the history of Adweek magazine's website.
Overall, in just one week, the video amassed over 15 million views (and 22 million by the end of the campaign). Not to mention being picked up by hundreds of newspapers, blogs, and broadcast news outlets. Cardstore.com saw almost a 25% increase in sales for the week versus the previous year.
In the end, we made people not only think about Mother's Day, we made them rethink the responsibilities of mothers and why they deserve so much love and appreciation.
