Products that could benefit from a marketing campaign on Mother’s Day

_{_{Written by Yuhwen Foong}}

Mother’s Day has never been a major marketing event for most brands/ businesses in Malaysia. I guess it’s because Mother’s Day is always stuck in an awkward period (Mid May, after Easter, around Raya, school holidays and Wesak Day). With 3 major ethnic populations and a country that respects all religions, we have way too many festivities and sadly, Mother’s Day has often become just another day. It seems we have all lost our love for this day once we hit high school.

It is my hope that some of you marketers who are reading this article, feel the same as me and hopefully together, we can give this precious day more effort for all the mothers in Malaysia.

What are some of the products that would benefit from a Mother’s Day campaign? To truly benefit from this question, I guess we need to dig a little deeper. There are many groups of mother audiences. After all, a women who chooses to become a mother goes through more than 3 quarters of their lives as a mother. So pretty much any product that a women could use in those 3 quarters could and should promote a Mother’s Day campaign.

Let’s break it down into groups shall we?

Moms in their 50s. We are targeting young adults who are buying gifts for their mothers.
Moms in their early 30s. We are targeting new fathers buying gifts for their new mom wives.
Moms in their early 40s. Our audience are primary shool kids who are excited to buy a small gift for their mothers.
Moms in their 70s. Our audience are older adults in their 40s buying gifts for their elderly mothers.

As you can see, moms come in all ages! For this article, let’s dissect each group accordingly.

The first group: Young adults who are buying gifts for their mothers.

I remember being in this group and will write this from my own personal experience. As we come out to the workforce for the first time, we are stressed out by the traffic, the sudden responsibility which is our car loan, house loan, and all our bills. We are so busy trying to maintain our social life and keep our sanity we often forget our priorities and take things for granted. The years flew by for me, and for Mother’s Days I often just bring mom out for a meal. I am guilty of this, but as a buyer of Mother’s Day gifts in this age group, I was a real last-minute buyers. As a first-jobber, I really wanted to impress my mom and for those times, I got her mini staycation holidays and meals.

Staycations and dining options could really benefit from influencer marketing because these places and services can benefit from visual representation and reviews. If you are instagrammable, it is super easy to promote your brand. As an SME business, influencer marketing also offers you the flexibility to work within your budget as well and if you do not have any other online/ digitalisation efforts done, influencer marketing offers an immediate way to get online without much effort elsewhere. The great thing about travel and F&B is that you can offset some of your marketing expenses in the form of products and services in kind. I wouldn’t recommend going entirely on the “in-kind” method of influencer marketing, but I wouldn’t rule that out necessarily.

The second group: New fathers buying gifts for their new mom wives.

This is the age group where the children are too young to buy gifts and the role of gifting goes to the fathers of the house. I’m writing this as an outsider as I am neither married nor with kids.

In the early stages of motherhood, a mother’s priority is only the kid. She would probably be overworked and way too busy to self-care at all. What then would be a great gift for Mother’s day to mothers in their early 30s? I’d say, any self-pampering gifts like spas and massages and great skin-care for those eyebags. Overnight staycations are impossible as they will likely miss their children too much unless you go as a family, but then it becomes about the kids again, so I would really go for the more me-time centric pampering. Time is so precious for these young mothers as they are sleep deprived, get them things to save time. A robot vacuum cleaner, an automatic breast-pump, a thermomix!

Senheng should absolutely do crazy marketing at this point! As I write this article, I am frustrated because all these other products too could benefit from using influencers for Mother’s Day promotion. For example, Influencer marketing could be used to illustrate how a thermomix could save their time and create great food for their child.

The third group: Primary school kids who are excited to buy a small gift for their mothers.

This is the cutest group of all. I remember buying gifts for my mother on Mother’s Day when I was in primary school. I got her a table decoration from a stationary shop near my house. We didn’t have Lazada then. I would make her a card, I would use some of my angpao money to get her something I thought she might like - Magic Pens? I guess children are simple. For example, when my niece got me a Christmas gift when she was ~7, it was a little snowmen from the flea market. She would get me a snowglobe but those were pricey. Usually children would buy things that are less practical, more decor style, something affordable like Kaison, Daiso? Typo or Smiggle is a little on the pricey end but definitely could too. Our younger gen consumers are watching YouTube all the time, why not do influencer marketing to seed some ideas of what they could do/get for their mothers for Mother’s Day?

What would be a great brand for this? Stationeries. Every kid made a card for their parent in this lifetime. If I am a stationary brand, I would absolutely promote cards or arts and crafts ideas for Mother’s day!

Our final group: Older adults buying gifts for their elderly mothers.

I’m in this age group now and I believe Mother’s Day gifts are the absolute best at this age. I make a decent living today. I guess we all do, just by years of servitude. The two years of pandemic, we bought our mother a bouquet of flowers and printed some awesome photos from photobook and to our surprise she loved it. My mother, she gets more sentimental as she ages. In her 70s, I guess there’s nothing more she needs except our time, and reminder of the sweet memories we shared. Throughout the pandemic, my sisters couldn’t visit as they are all living overseas. I took my mother on staycations to Genting, Putrajaya and all over KL, she showed me places my dad use to take her on dates, Tugu Negara, Botanical Gardens, the Bukit Bintang strip to name a few. It made me realise that it really doesn’t matter where we could go, just the simple act of spending time with her is so precious both for her and for me.

Elderly care is a huge responsibility and I can’t emphasize how grateful I am that my mother is still so independent and strong. However, there are parts that needs to be managed. Hearing aid for example, is so so so very expensive but it is a gift worth giving. Not being able to listen over time, will lead to them not understanding sound. This speeds up the rate of the progress of alzheimers. There are so many things I can think of to buy for my mother for Mother’s Day that could improve her life. Compression Socks, ankle support, blood pressure machine. Medical aid of all sorts should do influencer marketing, make it more common for our elderly parents to see it is very common and absolutely OK to use a cane or walking stick. I am really trying to get my mother to use a walking stick but she has too much pride to do so.

As you can see, Mother’s Day gifting should really not just be flowers, chocolates and dining, there are so many other product categories that could benefit from a Mother’s Day campaign. I also wrote a follow up article on campaign ideas if you are interested. Click here!

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