Case study · Home & Interiors
Mother’s Day is the most crowded moment in the calendar, with every retailer chasing the same feeling. We asked a simple question for Interflora: if being a mum were a paid job, what would it pay? The answer, £172,000 a year, a salary calculator and a job ad in The Times earned 73 pieces of coverage and a 9% rise in like-for-like sales.
- +9% like-for-like sales
- 73 pieces of coverage
- +26% sentiment uplift
- 43K microsite visits
- Client Interflora
- Sector Floristry, gifting
- Services Research, creative campaign, PR, influencer relations, digital
- When Mother’s Day
- Audience UK gift buyers
- Channels National and parenting media, The Times, influencers, microsite
What did Interflora need?
Interflora wanted to own Mother’s Day and grow web traffic and sales in one of its most important trading periods. Every retailer is saying the same thing at the same time.
- Business objective: increase web traffic and sales over Mother’s Day.
- Communication objective: earn genuine affection, not just visibility, and give national press a reason to cover Interflora in the run-up to Mother’s Day.
What was the insight?
Everyone says being a mum is the hardest job in the world. Nobody had put a price on it.
The idea was the mum salary.
What did we do?
- Original research. With a careers expert, we calculated a mum’s salary at £172,000 a year, for more than 90 hours a week as cook, taxi driver, teacher and entertainer.
- A salary calculator. An on-site app let people calculate their own mum’s salary.
- A job ad in The Times. A “hardest job in the world” ad in The Times drove people to the calculator.
- Parenting media and influencers. We seeded the story to national and parenting media and parenting bloggers.
What did it achieve?
Results by stage of the AMEC evaluation framework, with the source for each figure.
| Stage | Measure | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Outputs | Pieces of coverage | 73 | Prohibition coverage log |
| Outputs | National titles | 12 | Prohibition coverage log |
| Outputs | Audience reached | 4.2M | Prohibition coverage log |
| Out-takes | Sentiment uplift | +26% | Social listening |
| Out-takes | Social media engagement | +88% | Social platform analytics |
| Outcomes | Salary calculator uses | 20K | Interflora web analytics |
| Outcomes | Microsite visits | 43K | Interflora web analytics |
| Impact | Like-for-like sales | +9% | Interflora |
| Impact | Share of voice over Mother’s Day | Top, against competitors | Social listening |
What did Interflora get from it?
Mother’s Day conversation, warmth and sales. Interflora led share of voice against competitors, and like-for-like sales rose 9%.
What did we learn?
- Put a number on it. A salary gave a familiar sentiment a headline.
- Give people something to do. The calculator turned readers into visitors.
- What we would do differently. track calculator users through to orders, so the sales effect can be tied directly to the campaign.
