Dive Brief:

• Tropicana is giving a helping hand to family members on Mother's Day by launching its first Mother's Day Sunrise Support brunch hotline at 1-800-2TROPMOM, according to materials shared with Marketing Dive.
• The hotline aims to relieve the need for the family's own mother to answer typical questions on the holiday. Live experts are ready on the other end of the phone line to answer questions like, "What's the ratio of OJ to bubbly in a mimosa?", "What should I serve my mom for a special holiday brunch?" and "How do I make the perfect scrambled eggs?"
• Meanwhile, Reed's Ginger Beer is disputing a remedy that mothers have prescribed for ages, according to a press release. The 88% of moms that said they'd treat an upset stomach with ginger ale is misguided, Reed's says, because most ginger ales don't have enough ginger, the stomach-settling ingredient, to make an impact. "They Fooled Your Mom" is the brand's first fully integrated campaign, featuring social media, video, in-store, radio, sampling and out-of-home (OOH) advertising to get the message out about this Mother's Day campaign.

Dive Insight:

Mothers are like stories — everybody has one — and Mother’s Day is a ripe occasion for brands to back storymaking about the day of celebration. Tropicana's effort to generate new stories around Mother's Day by becoming the customer service agent for holiday brunches follows several hotline efforts by brands like Oscar Mayer, Devour and Wingstop.

The campaign also echoes two others recently announced by the Kraft Heinz Company, one for Kraft and one for Maxwell House. Under the Kraft brand, the company will foot up to $100 in Mother's Day babysitting bills, to a total maximum of $50,000 in receipts submitted to its website, to give moms the day off. Applicants are encouraged to tell brief tales of their holiday plans on social media, sparking user-generated content for the brand to reuse in its social efforts.

Meanwhile, Maxwell House released a video of expecting mothers at a birthing class watching video clips of their own mothers describing their stories of childbirth. This salute was complemented by a pop-up store in New York City's Soho district for several days before Mother’s Day, where guests could send a personalized card to their mother or make a call or video chat.

While Tropicana's hotline aims to provide the kind of wisdom that mothers would otherwise provide for a good Sunday brunch, Reed's has decided that its contribution will be puncturing that wisdom with some hard facts. Ginger does have digestive and other benefits, the brand notes, but ginger ale hasn't contained fresh ginger root for generations. In fact, Canada Dry had to pay $11.2 million in February to settle claims that it misled consumers with its "Made from Real Ginger" label, although the company still contends there is some real ginger extract in the soda. Reed's points out in its campaign that its ginger beer does contain real ginger, a fact it's promoting in its "They Fooled Your Mom" push around the annual holiday.