This year on June 16, millions of families will gather together to celebrate Father’s Day. It’s an emotional time for many as we recognize the impact of dads on our lives.
That date, the third Sunday in June, is the most popular time globally for Father’s Day to take place, adopted by nearly 100 countries from the United States to Greece, from Peru to Vietnam. But not all of the more than 200 countries that celebrate the holiday share the same date, or the same traditions.
Just like with Mother’s Day, brands also take this holiday as an opportunity to share heartstring-tugging social content that recognizes the contributions dads make to their families. Since April, brands and influencers hailing from regions like the United Kingdom, India, and South Africa have netted around 114.2M views for Father’s Day-focused content.
Some top insights from our findings:
- With 84.9M collective views, Facebook is the most popular platform for Father’s Day content. It makes sense: Facebook is where viewers connect with family members.
- Father’s Day is a global holiday, but the mood varies from sentimental to celebratory by country. Brands would do well to utilize market research in order to strike the right tone.
Related Read: Brand Videos Celebrate Mother’s Day With Laughs and Love
Here are some of the way brands around the world are commemorating the dad-centric holiday.
United States: Father’s Day
Father’s Day has been a staple on the American calendar since 1910. Its founder, Sonora Smart Dodd, was raised with her five siblings by William Jackson Smart, a single dad who also happened to be a Civil War veteran. After listening to a church sermon on Mother’s Day, she petitioned for there to be a similar holiday to celebrate fathers like her own.
Today, the United States’ version of Father’s Day has kept true to its heartwarming origins. Even now, emotionally-charged social content draws the most engagement. In the past 90 days, the top U.S. Father’s Day video comes from Hooray Heroes, a company that makes sentimental, personalized books to gift to dad. With 4.6M views and 33.1K engagements, it’s safe to say it’s making a lot of viewers cry happy tears.
Other top content takes a similarly moving tone. Roughly 2.5 million people cried alongside Tampa, Florida anchorman Josh Benson when he shared a video of a step-daughter asking her step-father to formally adopt her. For brands in the United States, tearjerker content comes out on top for a holiday made to generate those warm-and-fuzzy feelings.
Germany: Vatertag
Germany takes its version of Father’s Day very seriously. This public holiday is a day off from work for everyone, dad or not. Celebrated on a Thursday around the 40th day after Easter, the holiday fell on May 30 in 2019. It’s followed by a Bruckentag (bridge day) to ensure that for every German citizen, Vatertag is only the beginning of a four-day weekend.
Vatertag began in the Middle Ages as a celebration of God, the original dad according to the Christian religion. But over time, it evolved into a celebration of all fathers in Germany and developed an atmosphere that is more about partying with Dad than piety toward him. Edeka, Germany’s largest supermarket chain, published a cheeky video about children thanking Dad “because you aren’t Mom,” and generated 2.1M views.
Another top brand video comes from beer company Krombacher, which features a goofy dad creating what at first glance is a children’s wagon, but which is actually a beer cart — a move that got laughs from 132K viewers. These videos are successful because they underline the lighthearted, celebratory mood of the four-day Vatertag weekend.
France: Fête des Pères
France has never had any pretenses about its own take on Father’s Day, which has been a commercial holiday since 1952. A lighter brand called Flaminaire wanted to sell more of its products to male smokers and launched a large-scale advertising campaign depicting children buying lighters for their fathers on the third Sunday in June.
Today, the holiday continues to be a fairly commercial one. In the past 90 days, the top brand content for Fête des Pères comes from Gilette France, a razor blade advertisement with 238K views that is only seven seconds long but gets the gist across: time to buy Dad a holiday gift!
Other top videos come from Photobox France, a photography accessory depot; Cardhu, a whiskey distillery; and Electro Dépôt, which is sort of like Best Buy in the U.S. Brands use the lead-up to Fête des Pères to remind children that their shopping time is almost up.
Japan: Chichi No Hi (父の日)
Japan’s version of Father’s Day combines Eastern filial piety with Western consumerism in a holiday that originates with the United Kingdom’s influence on Japanese modern traditions. While young children may make origami crafts, adult children commemorate the day by buying Dad luxury goods like wagyu beef, fine whiskey, or department store products.
With 3.2M views, the most popular Japanese Father’s Day video comes from alcohol giant Suntory, which advertises Maker’s Mark as the ideal whiskey to give to Dad. “How about giving some nice whiskey on Father’s Day?” the accompanying tweet suggests.
Another top video is Kurushiru’s cooking tutorial for a luxurious beef dish for Father’s Day. Because of Japan’s limited farmland, beef is its most expensive meat. However, Kurishiru invites viewers to splurge on Dad’s special day.
No matter where you are in the world, all of these Father’s Day celebrations have that one person in common: though they may show it in different ways, this holiday is, at its core, about celebrating one of the most important people in many of our lives.