Editorial: Hail the mother of all marketing opportunities

Mark Dawson, editor of Wanganui Chronicle

So another Mother's Day comes and duly goes ... with a flurry of thank-you cards, flowers, breakfasts in bed and assorted gifts.

Quite right, too — it is an important day to celebrate.

It is the day we acknowledge and recognise the wonderful, selfless efforts of ... the admen, marketeers and retailers who can whip half the nation into sufficient frenzy (or, at least, into feelings of guilt) that they splash the cash.

It is one way, I suppose, to express what your mother means to you and, for some, buying a prezzie is easier than actually spending time with them.

And so we have the bombardment of adverts in the preceding weeks as the marketing machine goes into overdrive. Possibly some smart-aleck somewhere is working on Grandma's Day or Aunty's Day.

My favourite advert was the DIY/hardware store proclaiming its "Mother's Day specials" and then trumpeting chainsaws and drills at reduced prices.

Was that the gift you were supposed to get for your mum, or was it for the man of the family who could then knock up some shelves as an M-Day surprise?

I'm happy to go with the gender equality theory that says chainsaws and drills as just as much for womenfolk as anyone else.

But I am sure this is not what Anna Jarvis had in mind when she founded Mother's Day in West Virginia, USA, in 1908 as a tribute to her own mother who had died three years earlier.

Indeed, she railed against the commercial kidnapping of the occasion:

"A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment."

Sorry Anna, you can't beat the bottom line. Roll on, Christmas ...