Olympic Commercial Turns Heads

Everyone looks forward to The Super Bowl, and not just for the game. The other exciting visuals of the day are found during those short snippets between the game: the commercials. And yet, the same cannot be said for the Olympics. Until this year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, when there were some serious commercial contenders in the advertising world.

One such spot that stood out from the crowd was the Thank You, Mom campaign from Proctor & Gamble that celebrated the often-overlooked supporters behind every Olympic athlete. In fact, agency juggernaut Wieden + Kennedy was so certain of its campaign that they kicked it off with a 100-day plan, which ramped up through Mother’s Day, eventually debuting what could be called the centerpiece of the campaign—the commercial, Pick Them Back Up—nearly a month before the Olympics during the Golden Globe Awards, which was heavily supported by crowds of the same women who not only buy P&G products, but also the majority of whom have probably nursed their own kids back from defeat. A few days before that, the company cleverly released the same spot on YouTube, where it began creating buzz immediately, and soon went viral, racking up more then 1.5 million views in just two days. Today, that number sits at 19.25 million. Months before that, a complementary campaign, Raising an Olympian—an online short-documentary-style film series—focused on the triumphant stories of more than two dozen Olympians from their mothers’ point of view. This series alone racked up more 8.8 million views. And of course, no campaign in 2014 would be complete without a Facebook page, which is not only still running months later, but also quite active, with nearly 900,000 fans, along with a heavily supported hashtag, #thankyoumom, to which all online content was driven. Via their online mini documentaries, television commercial, and social media presence, the Thank You, Mom campaign invaded all the heavy-hitters of today’s media.

So what was so great about the commercial? Besides the inevitable warm-and-fuzzies that come from watching adorable children try to ski, skate and snowboard, nervous and awkward at first; following their challenges and setbacks along the way, to their ultimate Olympian success, buoyed the entire way by their ever-present, supportive mothers, the ad celebrated unsung heroes of the Olympic games. Sure, Moms wield the most buying power for P&G’s roster of products and is their core consumer, but she is so much more than the chief-grocery-buyer. She is the hand-holder, tear-wiper, ever encouraging support system for her children, whatever it is they are trying to accomplish, and P&G needed to find a way to resonate with her core values: her children. By illustrating that every Olympian was someone’s child, its spot did just that, and managed to thank Moms across America at the same time. With approximately 33.6 billion media impressions, it became the most shared video of the Olympics and the most successful campaign in P&G’s 175-year history with record-setting ROI results

Here’s the spot so you can see exactly why: