Fake job posting leads to realization that moms work really, really hard

The best campaign of the year began with a simple premise: People take their moms for granted and don’t give them enough credit for the work they do. To rectify that, Boston-based marketing agency Mullen, working for American Greetings, developed a fake job posting and placed it on newspaper and online job sites. When people applied, they were invited to interview via webcam, where they were told the increasingly unbelievable work they would be expected to perform if they got the “job”—which paid nothing! Only when the candidates exclaimed that nobody would do this kind of work were they informed that millions of people do: mothers. 

The emotions the candidates displayed when thinking about their own moms sold the video and led to more than 21 million views and 1.8 billion media impressions—and a dramatic increase in sales of American Greetings Mother’s Day cards. 

The effort wins the Grand Prize for Campaign of the Year in PR Daily’s 2014 Digital Awards. We congratulate the team from Mullen that worked on the project: Jaclyn Ruelle, Christina Orlansky, Caroline Trainor, Lauren Brennan, Dave Weist, Tim Vaccarino, Jon Ruby, Andrea Mileskiewicz, Blake Winfree, Vera Everson, Zeke Bowman, Rebekah Pagis, Jessica Zdenek, Laila Lynch, Rebecca Wojicki, Eric Williamson, and Ryan Houts. Our congratulations also go out to the American Greetings team: Alex Ho, Dawn Wayt, Patrice Saad, Megan Baucco, Meghan Olmstead, Danielle Krouse, and Leah Lange.