Most Iconic Ads of All Time: 5

Procter & Gamble – Thank You, Mom (2010)

P&G has been wooing mothers for a long time. During the Vancouver Olympics - 2010, it brought all its key brands - some 34 of them - together to pay one of the most lovely tributes to the mother by any brand.

The campaign, created by Wieden & Kennedy, focused on the parent company - P&G, and not on any specific brand from P&G.

Marc S. Pritchard, global chief marketing officer of P.& G. was quoted saying, "P&G is in the business of helping moms. Every Olympic athlete has a mom and those moms are with their athletes every step of the way.”

The challenge before the company and the agency was to find that truly authentic connection between the company - where all its brands can agree on that one single-minded purpose.

They found that one in paying the tribute to moms.

P&G's value has always been about - touching lives, improving life - and they took it to one step further in that Olympics.

The other challenge was that on the surface, P&G did not have any connection with the Olympics. But they realized that every Olympic athlete has a mom. And the connection was that P&G loves moms.

That connection was the power behind the idea which took all the 34 brands and connected them on the world Olympics stage at such a large scale.

The interesting part was this: While the entire world sat glued, watching the athletes winning medals, P&G did not glorify those athletes. P&G went on to celebrate the moms of those athletes.

P&G created the tagline: “P&G, Proud sponsor of Moms” which tied in all the elements of the campaign.

The moms - who are the target audience of P&G were given a license to be part of the campaign. The digital part of the campaign helped each of the consumers to pay tribute to their respective moms - thereby not only the athletes but also the watching crowd were brought to participate in the campaign.

P&G also did something very interesting: They built the P&G Family Home, the first “home away from home” for moms and families of Olympic athletes, and flew all Team USA moms to the Olympics - which was a masterstroke which garnered a lot of PR

P&G went on to use this campaign during the 2011 Special Olympics. They leveraged the idea and similar executions during the 2012 London Olympics. During the 2016 Rio Olympics, P&G activated the campaign in more than 35 countries with a 360-degree campaign across platforms.

Results

The 2010 "Thank You, Mom" was THE BIGGEST and THE MOST SUCCESSFUL global campaign in P&G’s 175-year history. Records show that P&G got about $500 million in global incremental sales, 76 billion global media impressions, over 74,000,000 global views, And over 370,000,000 Twitter interactions - which are simply staggering return on the investment they had made.

And, P&G has owned up the most powerful asset in the world - the heart of moms.