Kraft stands for families. By making mealtimes easier and food kids are guaranteed to love, Kraft gives parents moments of release. For 116 years, it has been a pantry staple, but recently consumers have felt disconnected to the brand. Only 13% of families stated they feel close to Kraft in a custom “brand closeness” survey.

Our objective was to get Kraft close to consumers’ hearts again, and increase connection with parents by tapping into relevant cultural moments and highlighting how Kraft products help make life easier for parents.

Kraft would be the brand to give Moms their day away.

We could have simply put out a campaign about how Moms deserve a break. Instead, we put Kraft’s money where their mouths were by diverting HALF of our working media budget for the Mother’s Day effort to literally covering babysitting bills for Moms.

We needed to take a scrappy approach to getting the word out since half our media dollars were now funding childcare. We had to be careful, as “Mom guilt” is a real phenomenon, and we wanted to be respectful of all choices for how Moms spend Mother’s Day. Our approach also needed to make Moms feel confident in their desire for a break and that it wasn’t something they needed to hide deep down.

There would be no one better to help start this conversation and help Kraft give Moms a break than real Moms.

Mother’s Day Away came to life through influencers, social, PR, newspaper, and KraftMothersDayAway.com to spread the word that Kraft would cover babysitting costs for Moms on Mother’s Day.

We collaborated with 5 Mom micro-influencers to create and promote seven different assets across social, amplifying REAL women opening up about the struggles of motherhood. They created raw, unproduced video confessions about how they love being a Mom, but also need a break sometimes. They let their followers know it’s okay to take a break this Mother’s Day and that Kraft would help make it possible. We promoted the video assets across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, targeting Moms who needed to hear our message most. And through outreach to press outlets plus newspaper, we generated even more awareness of Kraft’s gift to Moms.

All media drove to KraftMothersDayAway.com, where Moms could get all the details and submit for Mother’s Day babysitting funds.

Moms loved Mother’s Day Away. Once submissions opened, all babysitting funds were claimed within 2 hours.

Kraft donated more than 5,000 hours of babysitting to Moms all over the United States, inserting Kraft into their lives in a way we could never have done through advertising alone. Moms posted on social to show what they were doing on their Mother’s Day Away and continued to post about how happy they were with their Kraft babysitting reimbursement long after paid media and press had stopped.

A custom Google study showed Kraft’s brand love measure increased from 13% to 20% (+7 ppt in brand closeness), huge for a single holiday effort. Furthermore, 23% of the families expressed a high likelihood to recommend Kraft, up from 14%, demonstrating the campaign helped drive favorability for the brand.

Overall, the campaign generated over 1.1 Billion PR impressions with social engagement more than double Kraft’s benchmarks