Moms and Maids campaign creator responds to public debate

Following the growing online chatter on the Moms and Maids campaign, The Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) has released a statement to the media saying that this is exactly what the team had hoped for when it lent its support to the campaign.“Four days after its launch, the campaign video has reached more than 2.6 million viewers worldwide, according to O&M’s tracking. Never has the issue of domestic workers' right to a day off been discussed on this scale and generated so much buzz,” the statement to Marketing read.At the same time, TWC2 said it would like to acknowledge all views about the film - which was after all meant to be provocative. It explained that anticipating that the film would draw flak from the public, the TWC2 had shared its concerns with O&M.O&M had then explained to the client that the families portrayed in the film had participated in the film because they wanted to do their part to advocate for domestic workers' rights.“We jointly applaud these women and their families for their contribution to the cause. Whether you liked the film or not, let’s not forget that as a society we have failed miserably in our treatment of domestic workers. Many domestic workers toil day in and day out without the fundamental labour right of a weekly day off. We have been campaigning for this for more than a decade,” the spokesperson added.She added that much still needs to be done to change the mindsets in societies and hopes the public will carry on supporting the cause.Read the full statement here:Statement on "Mums and Maids" film27 April 2015Statement on “Mums and Maids” filmMultiple viewpoints have been...Posted by TWC2 on Sunday, April 26, 2015 Was a reaction statement necessary?Mylinh Cheung, founder of Epic PR said that the conversation and awareness that was generated by the campaign was definitely a good one and the statement put out by the company reflects all points of view surrounding the debate quite faithfully.However she criticised TWC2 for saying that it was not heavily involved in creating the spot.“The organisation seems to be distancing itself from the negative fall out of the ad, which at the end of the day, they need to be as accountable for.”Daniel Yap, head of creative communications for Right Hook said that the statement seems to make things worse for TWC2 as the organisation seems to want to claim the credit for starting a hot topic, but want to pin at least some of the damage on the agency."It doesn't sound like a good working relationship," said Yap.He added that what TWC2 really needed to do at this point was to bring the conversation back to the "maids deserve a day off" issue. He added that even though people were talking about the video, they were not necessarily talking about the issue of giving maids a day off."What this statement from TWC2 does is to further distract from their stated campaign objective. The statement also does nothing to mitigate the anger coming from offended parents, who are some of TWC2's key audience since they are employers of maids. If they cannot repair relationships with this key audience, they may ultimately lose the communications war," said YapMeanwhile other ad agency creative leads also said that while the observation is a disturbing one, trying to use it to convince parents to give a day-off is a stretch.Earlier last week, Marketing also interviewed several mothers on their thoughts on the campaign. While some supported the film, others were confused by the emphasis on parents spending more time with their children. Many mothers Marketing spoke to were also angered because they believed it showed mothers in a bad light by portraying them as inadequate parents and by not mentioning the father’s role.