Opinion: Marketing on Mother’s Day is about more than flowers

“Mother’s Day. Forget flowers, buy her a shed.” This was the legend outside a fencing and shed retailer southwest of London yesterday.

It was hard not to admire the chutzpah of both the retailer for making such a startling suggestion and any passing shopper who might have thought it good advice to follow.

But assuming that you were not one of the hapless individuals who presented your dear mother with a wooden, build-it-yourself structure, what measures could DIY retailers have taken to appeal to both customers and their mothers?

A quick scoot around the B&Q website would have uncovered a dedicated Mothers Day page where shoppers were recommended to treat the materfamilias to a giftcard.

But hold on a moment, while we live in emancipated times, is a giftcard for a DIY outfit really a token of love and respect?

“Marketing is about more than doing what seems appropriate for a particular season or event and sometimes it’s a lot better to act counter-intuitively”

John Ryan

Perhaps, because on Saturday, anyone venturing into Brico Depot, the low-cost French sister of B&Q, just outside Lille would have seen a demonstrator wielding cable-free power tools to the gentle strains of AC/DC.

And the overwhelming majority of the small crowd of onlookers he had gathered were women.

So here’s a thought. Marketing is about more than doing what seems appropriate for a particular season or event and sometimes it’s a lot better to act counter-intuitively if you want to create a stir.

Shifting expectations

With this in mind and given our liberal dispositions, here are a couple of ideas that might or might not find shoppers willing to take them seriously.

June 19 is Father’s Day and perhaps your Dad could be spoilt with petunias, gladioli, or something of the kind. Or perhaps he’d like a box of chocolates (more likely) with some (manly) scent.

Retailers are pretty good at following each other and doing the predictable and while these may sound like left-field notions, if you can shift power-tools on Mother’s Day weekend, then why not?

“Even just a little move away from the wholly predictable is refreshing if you happen to be a consumer and it’s the sort of thing that translates to money through the tills”

John Ryan

Even just a little move away from the wholly predictable is refreshing if you happen to be a consumer and it’s the sort of thing that translates to money through the tills.

All of which notwithstanding, it is still entirely likely that power tools will find their way towards Father in the same month as a possible Brexit. Handy for putting up fences for what lies beyond perhaps.

Getting it right on Mother’s Day is no longer a matter of picking up a bunch of daffs at the garage. Do what you think is right…