The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2024–2025
O Boticário's Tormenta films the teenage years as a storm mothers sail through
O Boticário's Mother's Day film turns adolescence into a storm at sea: mother and child brave the tempest until calmer waters arrive.
O Boticário
What it had to solve
Mothering a teenager is widely seen as a challenging journey for mother and child, yet society tends to overlook that phase. For Mother's Day, O Boticário wanted to portray the teenage years authentically, recognizing these mothers and sparking reflection.
How it works
Mothering a teenager is widely seen as a challenging journey for both mother and child, but society often overlooks this phase. For Mother's Day, O Boticário set out to authentically portray the tumultuous teenage years — recognizing these mothers and sparking societal reflection.
The film chooses a storm as its metaphor and keeps it running through every scene: the tempest a mother braves with her child stands for the turbulence of raising a teenager. Production design and visual effects make the storm visceral, and the story keeps its promise that beyond every storm, calmer waters await.
The result is a Mother's Day message aimed at a phase that usually gets no campaign at all: mothers of teenagers are seen, and their resilience is framed as something worth honoring rather than enduring. The work was recognized in the D&AD awards archive.
Why it lands
- A storm is instantly readable as trouble, so the metaphor needs no explanation for anyone who has raised or been a teenager.
- Setting the film in the teenage years differentiates the Mother's Day message from the usual nostalgia for babies and childhood.
- Ending beyond the storm turns the campaign from sympathy into recognition of resilience, which is what the mothers are meant to feel.
- Keeping the metaphor literal across production design and effects gives the film a single visual language instead of disconnected scenes.
What it did
The campaign gave mothers of teenagers a moment of recognition and turned a Mother's Day brand film into an occasion for societal reflection about a phase that is usually ignored. The work was archived by D&AD.
What you can take
A metaphor can carry a whole message: when a feeling is hard to describe, make it visible as weather — viewers feel the difficulty and the resilience without a word of explanation.
Since then
Tormenta put a spotlight on the overlooked stretch of motherhood — the teenage years — and framed the mother who stays in the boat through the storm as the person being honored on Mother's Day. The D&AD source records the concept but no audience metrics, so the case rests on the idea: a physical metaphor can make an emotional phase visible, and choosing the unglamorous years can make a seasonal campaign feel new.
Sources
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