A woman hugs her young son, tells him to have a good day and watches as his school bus drives away. Only then, when he’s out of sight, does her smile fade and her eyes fill with tears.
Overcome with emotion, she tries to block the camera that’s recording the moment. Too late, though, because it’s been captured in all its raw glory.
A new campaign from Teleflora started with that single, seconds-long piece of user-generated content. From there, it grew into a 60-second hero ad called “The Hardest Part: A Teleflora Love Story,” which looks at Mother’s Day through a different lens than the category norm.
While the ad celebrates the bonds between mothers and their children—typical of marketing around the spring holiday—it turns the focus to the bittersweet feeling of loosening the parental grip. The hardest part isn’t “the day-to-day mess, stress and exhaustion” of raising children, per the brand, it’s letting go so they can grow up.
“It’s something that moms feel all the time because we want to raise children who will be independent and thrive in the world, and yet releasing them feels impossible,” Danielle Mason, the brand’s vice president of marketing, told Adweek. “It’s a human truth that we thought advertising hadn’t touched on before.”
‘Bus Mom’
Viewers of “The Hardest Part” may not know “Bus Mom” personally, but many will surely feel her pain at seeing her little one trundle off for the first day of school. Other clips in the ad feature life-changing events like wedding ceremonies and college moves, and in each, there’s a proud mom barely holding it together.
The work comes from Teleflora’s in-house team, The Wonderful Agency, which worked from Mason’s brief and the “Bus Mom” video she unearthed in her research.
Creatives could have scripted and shot a narrative spot with trained actors but decided to take their cue from Mason’s outline. The UGC route was preferable for its authenticity but wasn’t without its challenges.