LG Asks Moms to Vent With #MomConfessions

“I don’t cook or clean anymore…I have my husband for that.” – Jenae, Atlanta, Georgia

“I hide the Nutella.” – Amy, Denham Springs, Louisiana

“I told my kids the ice cream truck only plays music when it is out of ice cream.” – Annie, Lathrop, California

Appliance maker LG is encouraging moms to vent their feelings about what their daily life is really like, with a new campaign it has dubbed “Mom’s Inner Voice.”

The campaign, which appropriately kicked off around Mother’s Day and runs through October, includes video created exclusively for digital channels, as well as a Tumblr page (LG’s first foray into this social network) that is serving as the sharing hub for [mostly] humorous comments from moms using the hashtag #MomConfessions. TV spots are also included in the initiative.

The Tumblr landing page includes links to all online and social content related to the campaign on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and LG’s YouTube channel. The campaign is also being promoted with paid media over BuzzFeed and PureWow, in which the ads are featured as pre-rolls.

The confessions on Tumblr can be sorted by most popular or most recent, and a “Confess Your Own” button encourages participation. Some of these confessions were already showcased on the LG billboard in New York City’s Times Square on May 11 for Mother’s Day.

The germ of the campaign came after LG talked to numerous moms in focus groups last year, according to David VanderWaal, head of marketing at LG Electronics USA.

“There is a lot of inner dialogue that moms have about their home and families,” VanderWaal says. “We started to understand a lot of the things that moms think about but are not saying, and a lot of them are funny. We were looking for a way to cut beyond the product and connect in a way no other brand was doing in our space.”

The video portion of the campaign relates more directly to LG products, with both TV ads and somewhat edgier video reserved for digital channels. In these commercials, actress Leslie Mann provides “Mom’s inner voice.”

The first ad was also shown in movie theaters ahead of the premiere of Leslie Mann’s new film The Other Woman. There are to be 12 videos in all produced over the course of the campaign, according to VanderWaal.

LG’s new French door refrigerator was the highlight of the first ad. Mom’s inner voice observes her son standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open, wondering where he learned that behavior. She shows her son the door-in-door compartment – an extra door that houses the drinks which LG is keen to draw attention to – and as the spot ends, it shows Dad staring in the open fridge with the voiceover “The tree from which the apple fell.”

In the racier online version of the ad, Dad stands in front of the fridge looking for something, while Mom speculates that although she tries to put the good stuff “front and center,” he seems to overlook it. While she seductively goes to show him the door-in-door, she muses, “I remember back in the day, I was great at putting the good stuff front and center…easy to get at.” He responds with “Ooooh…hello there!” But it turns out he means the drinks, not her. Meanwhile, her son comes in and grabs a drink as well.

Asked if LG wants to reach out to moms as a target audience in particular, VanderWaal says the company wants to reach both men and women. He says that according to video measurement company Ace Metrix, men have also been responding well to the campaign, although he did not give further specifics.

According to Topsy, there have been 667 #MomConfessions tweets since the campaign launched on April 15, with 201 of them occurring on Mother’s Day. Otherwise, they seem to be averaging about 14 tweets per day, and it will be up to LG to keep the momentum going.

On a slow day, LG helps it along with its own confessional posts: “Realizing that nap time is your new happy hour.”