Leo Burnett brings a new meaning to PU**MAK this Mother’s Day

By: Malati Siniah

While we loved the heartwarming Mother’s Day ads we spotted by our favourite brands we spotted a unique Mother’s Day campaign which gave an interesting twist to a vulgar local slang word.

The term Pu**mak is usually used in sentences as a cuss word, however, a new video was spotted a day after Mother’s Day rallying Malaysians to change the rude phrase to a praise. If you haven’t spotted it yet you might want to check out the video below before you continue reading…

The video posted on the newly created ‘Pujimak’ community page garnered over 210,000 views and 2,579 shares on Facebook. The about page of the community page, which has 1,371 followers, simply reads ‘Mother’s Day should not be the only day we honour our mothers. Keep her name clean for the other 364 days. Let’s sing praises, not rude phrases!’

The community we found out is the brainchild of a local creative agency, Leo Burnett. We spoke to Imran writer at Leo Burnett who conceptualised the idea behind Pujimak and Iska Hashim the agency’s Group Creative Director.

Can you share a bit more on this initiative, what spurred the agency to launch this?

We love it how people honour mothers once a year with the celebration of Mother’s Day. But honestly, we should be doing this each and every day. We just wanted to remind everyone that it doesn’t end after the 2nd Sunday of May.

More so here in Malaysia where the word mother (Mak) is part of our favourite curse word, “Pu**mak”. How can we continue to honour our mothers but not use her name in vain? We aimed to change how people use Mum’s name and praise her instead. Turn “Pu**mak” to “Pujimak” (praise mother).