P&G's 'Thank You, Mom' makes mothers the Olympic heroes — $500m in extra sales

Entering its first Games as a sponsor (Vancouver 2010), P&G wanted its corporate reputation turned into a competitive advantage, uniting 34 brands under one voice — with no obvious link between dish soap and the Olympics.

Don't sponsor athletes — sponsor their mothers. Raising an Olympian is the hardest job in the world and the best one; only a household-basics maker can say it.

W+K built 'Proud Sponsor of Moms': P&G flew Team USA moms to Vancouver, built the P&G Family Home for athletes' families, and let people thank their own moms online. For London 2012 it went global — the two-minute film 'Best Job' follows mothers around the world from their children's first steps to the Olympic podium, and closes: 'Thank you, Mom.'

The BBC reported P&G made $500m in additional sales in 2012 in association with the campaign, plus massive global media and social coverage. W+K's case page calls it the biggest and most successful global campaign in P&G's 175-year history, and 'Best Job' won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Commercial.

At the Olympics, every sponsor claims a piece of the athletes. P&G, a company with no sporting product at all, aimed one level higher: the mothers who raised them. The campaign's logic — every Olympic athlete has, or had, a mom, and raising one is 'the hardest job in the world' — let a maker of soap, diapers and razors stand next to the Games with a straight face.

W+K tested the idea at Vancouver 2010, P&G's first-ever corporate Olympic campaign. P&G paid travel costs so athletes' mothers could attend, built the P&G Family Home in the Village as a home away from home, and positioned itself as 'Proud Sponsor of Moms'. For London 2012 — the first Games of P&G's worldwide IOC partnership — the campaign scaled globally, anchored by the two-minute film 'Best Job', which cuts between mothers across the world doing laundry, feeding kids and driving to 5 a.m. practice, ending on 'Thank you, Mom.'

The results were unusually hard for an emotional campaign. The BBC reported $500m in additional P&G sales in 2012 associated with the campaign; W+K calls it the biggest and most successful global campaign in the company's 175-year history; and the Emmy for Outstanding Commercial went to 'Best Job' — W+K's fourth straight win in the category.

It found the one emotional territory a conglomerate of 34 unrelated brands could own: every athlete has a mother, and mothers buy (and are bought for) household basics.

P&G walked the talk — paying moms' travel to Vancouver and building the Family Home made 'sponsor of moms' a deed, not just a slogan, which is what made the sentiment land.

The insight inverts the usual Olympic formula: the athletes are the setting, the mothers are the heroes, so the brand touches viewers who will never compete.

Scaling through a first-of-its-kind worldwide IOC partnership let one idea run in every market at once, compounding the media effect instead of fragmenting it.

When your product has no Olympic story, sponsor the people who do the real work. 'Proud sponsor of moms' turned 34 unrelated household brands into one sentence any market could honor.

The campaign became a fixed Olympic ritual: P&G brought it back for London 2012 and its IOC partnership ran through the 2020 Games, with a new mom-honoring film each cycle. 'Best Job' took the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Commercial, capping W+K's four-year streak in the category, and 'Proud Sponsor of Moms' entered the short list of sponsorships — like Visa and the Olympics — where the brand and the event are permanently fused in memory.