Why Lift Like A Mother****?
A note from Kate, our Co-Owner and CMO
I want to be honest about where this campaign came from.
We didn't start with a brief or a trend report. We started with a feeling, and that feeling was us as a team, being utterly pissed off and exhausted. If I'm really honest, the tone got set in a forty-minute session between me and Aliza, our CEO, complaining about our husbands.
I am lucky, I have a “good” partner, a “good” village. I know, I know, I'm lucky. But even with all the support, there's a grind on me that can't be fully explained. I only have one child. How people with multiple do it, I lay my hat at your feet.
Every campaign conversation Aliza and I had landed in the same place: anger at what mums absorb every day. We kept saying it to each other, you bloody try it. You try to raise the next generation while working, keeping the house upright, holding some semblance of friendships together you haven't seen in a decade, while also trying to make heads or tails of these new hormones that have decided to take residence in your body. All while at the same time being pushed down by economic pressure, deeply unsupported, and deeply misunderstood.
It feels near impossible right now, cost of living, the economy in the toilet, more voices weighing in on how you are parenting, than ever before.
When we sat down with our creative agency, Willow and Blake, for our first meeting, they asked us a simple question: soft and whimsical, or bold and righteous? Bold and outrageous, I nearly yelled. Clear on what we stand for. I wanted whatever we made to land like a cheer, we see you, we feel you, we're in the trenches with you.
I'll die on the hill that until you have walked the shoes of a mum, you can’t truly understand the depth of the load, but yet we all have a mum, so why do we have such little respect for the work they are doing. I'm tearing up writing right now, because I know how hard I work across every part of my life, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat to be my little boy's mum. I'll do it again this afternoon in fact, when I run ten minutes late to kinder pickup, which will undoubtedly happen. I try to juggle it all. I am physically and emotionally in demand, all day, every day. Do we choose this? Yes of course we do, does that mean what we do can be minimised and reduced down, no.
For ten years, Franjo's Kitchen has existed to support mothers. That's the whole point. But somewhere in the category’s language of "support" and "nourishment" and "wellness," the real picture of motherhood has been softened. Made palatable. Made easier for everyone else in the room to swallow. Maybe it’s for the men in the room? The reality is, it’s anything but easy, and this girl gang we find ourselves in, knows that deep deep in our bones.
The default image of motherhood in advertising is a beautiful, smiling, pregnant woman, billowing curtains, picture-perfect life. Yuck! We're getting better at how we show mums in 2026. But we still don't like to show the true mental load, the actual load we carry everyday.
I was clear when we briefed this campaign: mums need to feel the collective energy of “we understand you, and we're walking your path as well”.
What we kept seeing
When we looked at the data and sat with the real stories coming through our community, one thing kept showing up. Women are NOT fragile. They are not in constant need of gentle care and quiet restoration. Sure don’t get me wrong, post-birth that is exactly what you need, but you only get a few weeks (if you are lucky to get that long), then the physical unspoken labour kicks into gear on a whole new level. Then mama it’s on.
Mothers are doing the hardest physical and emotional work of their lives, at volume, with almost no recognition of the effort involved. I still can’t wrap my head around why that’s allowed in our society? Why do we expect women to do one of the hardest and arguably most important jobs you can do (you know raising the next generation), with next to no support or recognition of that work, while nursing a debilitating c-section scar or tear to your….
A mother of a newborn lifts her baby an average of fifty times a day. She does it on broken sleep, on a body that is still recovering from an enormous lift, while managing the mental load of an entire household. By the time said child is two, the baby she's lifting weighs twelve to fourteen kilograms. That's progressive overload, every day, no off-day, no deload week.
That's a training program most people would quit. The weight compounds. The body gets punished. And I can guarantee a lot of those women are running on a crust of cold toast, a colder coffee and no sleep.
She doesn't quit. She would never dream of quitting, she is a mum. Mums don't quit, they lift.
We wanted the campaign to reflect that properly.
The phrase
Willow and Blake came back to us with two creative ideas. The one that landed was built on the idea of mothers as endurance athletes - Gym Bros Could Never. It plays on the truth that men, no matter how hard they train, can't really know what this is like. A sixty-minute weight session does not compare to labouring for hours, then breastfeeding from the minute the baby is born, then doing it again the next day. It does not compare to lifting a toddler all day while still recovering from birth, and breastfeeding at the same time.
Buried in that pitch was another line. One of three alternative phrases Clare from Willow and Blake had written underneath the lead.
Lift like a mother******.
It stopped me mid sentence. I literally said in the meeting that I wanted to put it on my chest and walk around with it. The line was actually where the whole territory had started, they'd written it first, then built the rest of the world out from there. This is what they do best, this play on words thing.
The wordplay is the point. Lift like a mother reads as strength. The asterisks turn it into lift like a motherf******. Both readings are true at once. The defiance and the tenderness sit on top of each other.
It also flips an older insult. We all grew up hearing hit like a girl, throw like a girl, fight like a girl, always meant as something less. Lift like a mother says the opposite. The standard of physical and emotional output that mothers sustain every day would stop most people in their tracks.
This isn't a softer phrase. It's a sharper one. We dare you to lift like a mother does.
Who this is for
We want you, our customer, our friend, to see yourself in this. Not the version of you that's easier to market to. The real one. The one who hasn't slept. The one who's already been up for two hours before anyone else in the house. The one who will lift everyone both physically and mentally throughout the day, and still somehow manages to get dinner on the table. I am right here with you, I am virtually holding your hand. Girl I get it, it’s the most fulfilling job of our lives, but can we please just get some peace.
There are times, I feel angry for all mums. So very angry. How can all of this fall on our shoulders? It feels unjust, but yet I know we, collectively all mums, will do it again tomorrow, because we love these little people with every fiber of our being. My son hung my moon.
What you'll see in the campaign
We worked with an incredibly group of women on this shoot, led by Danielle Mitchelle. Danielle brings a presence I think is rare in the motherhood category. She is a mum that has been tested, she has been pushed to her limits everyday and continues to lift. These images show, she doesn’t need saving. She looks like she's the one doing the saving. Honestly, I dare you to get in Danielle’s way, she is a mother who knows herself, and unapologetically stands for that everyday.
She’s fought demons with her mental health, struggled to survive through severe HG and a traumatic birth, and she still lifts like a damn mother******, cause she has to.
The images are strong. The language is direct. There's no soft filter on any of it. Because our customer doesn't need a soft filter. She needs someone to look her in the eye and tell her the truth: what she's doing is extraordinary.
That's what we tried to make. We hope it speaks to you.
