Nivea's Mother's Day ad this year dramatizes a common experience from 2020: adult children moving back in with their parents. 

The global spot depicts a daughter who returns to her mother's house to work from home during the pandemic, as many young adults did over the last year. It's not an easy transition: Mom makes frightening yoga noises while her daughter is in a Zoom meeting; the daughter runs the faucet and turns her mother's shower cold. However, when things go wrong for the daughter at work, her mom is there for her. The nuanced performances of the actors, combined with a cover of Bon Iver's "Skinny Love" by Birdy, help to turn up the emotional temperature.

Publicis One Touch created the ad, and Sune Sorensen directed, via Casta Diva Pictures.

“As a result of the pandemic, more and more millennials have moved back home, but as much as they love their moms, they don’t always like them; for many, the process of moving back home can be difficult and never more so within these times," says Axel Grimald, executive creative drector, Publicis One Touch. "This Mother’s Day film is our first step towards building a stronger, more intimate relationship between Nivea brand and younger consumers, by being on the pulse of culture and in touch with what is going on in young people’s lives all around the world.”

“I was immediately attracted to the inherent conflicts of the premise, both internal as well as external," adds Sorensen, who cast U.K. actors Hilary Hamilton and Melissa Lowe in the spot. In them, he saw "a daughter who wants to live her life independently and to whom it feels like a defeat that she has to move back home" and "a mother who has her own life now and struggles to 'speak the same language” or even understand her daughter’s young adult needs."