Dairy Queen Children’s Choir Guilts Parents Into Taking a Summer Day Off
42% of parents didn’t take a single day off in the past year. To combat this disturbing statistic, Dairy Queen and creative agency Barkley are challenging parents to get OOO for their kids by taking a summer skip day.
Beginning on June 21st to coincide the longest day of the year, the #SummerSkipDay campaign implores parents to play hooky from work and spend the day with their kids. DQ uses a children’s choir, The Summer Skip Day Singers, to deliver a guilt trip that no parent can ignore. The choir performs classic songs we know by heart, but with new lyrics that have a brutally honest bite, in summer locations like a lake, a baseball field and a park to show parents where they should be with their kids instead of at the office
Songs include Guilt Trip set to the tune of Ode to Joy and Working This Whole Summer set to the tune of I've Been Working on the Railroad with lyrics like, “You don't have to write that email, forget those status reports. Wouldn't you feel better at the pool in some shorts?”.
“Dairy Queen has filled our fans’ summer memory banks for 80 years,” says Maria Hokanson, VP of Marketing at International Dairy Queen. “Recently, we’ve noticed that many parents have lost touch with their summer selves by staying at work. We felt like it was time to encourage our fans to take a day off and make a memory with their kids.”
To entice parents to call in a skip day all summer long, DQ is launching a new app that offers a free Blizzard upon download and will release five new offers every week. Influencers and their families will take over DQ social channels with the mission to do as many summer activities as humanly possible. DQ will be giving them tips and tricks on how to make the most of their skip day, like proper cannonball form and how to turn khaki pants into khaki shorts.
