In 2004, just a scratch after Easter, David Jones rolled out a high-profile promotional campaign designed to win the Mother's Day dollar.
The deal was simple: customers who bought more than $100 of full-priced clothing, footwear or accessories were given a watch valued at around $110.
It was a huge hit, with daughters, sons and dads flocking to their respective department stores to purchase apparel for themselves and score a nifty gift for mum (or partner/wife) in the process.
The trouble was that the offer was so successful that many David Jones outlets ran clean out of watches six days before Mother's Day.
Aside from the fact that David Jones was grossly under-prepared, what's interesting about this scenario is that a large slice of the general public deemed the watch as an appealing Mother's Day offering.
If a watch works for Mother's Day, then it's safe for retailers to imagine that jewellery in general will work too.
Certainly, the available research into Mother's Day spending finds this to be the case. In 2006, an online Australian study by research company AC Neilsen discovered that of the 1,477 consumers surveyed, 118 of them selected jewellery as a gift for Mother's Day, while in the same year, a US-based shopping survey revealed that 26 per cent of mothers had put jewellery on their Mother's Day wish-list.
Findings like these tell of a significant demand for jewellery by both buyers and recipients in the lead-up to the yearly celebration.
The second point to glean from the David Jones experience is that Mother's Day campaigns, if enticing enough, have the potential to lift sales extraordinarily well. And this, believes Steve Odgen-Barnes of the Australian Centre of Retail Studies at Monash University, is where the real challenge lies.
"Every year, retailers put Mother's Day posters in the window accompanied by the usual sale," he says, "but the problem with advertising price points over products is that it doesn't resonate with the main Mother's Day spender: dad.
"Men never walk past a jewellery store and think: 'Great, 70 per cent off!' They are motivated by occasion, not promotion. Generally speaking, they don't like shopping, they leave it until the last minute and they have no confidence in buying the right thing. So when they enter your store in a distressed frame of mind, there's no point beating them to death with a discount catalogue - your selling point should be that you can solve their problem."
Creating storyboards for different types of mothers is a great way to attract a male Mother's Day spender, according to Ogden-Barnes.
"Men aren't big browsers - they like to see a focused range - and retailers can help them by grouping jewellery into separate ranges for the traditional mother, the contemporary mother, the 65+ mother, the mother interested in environmentalism, and so forth," he says.
"Another way to present a focused range is to find out what category of jewellery he's interested in buying, like watches, for example, then bring him the top-ten sellers so it's not too overwhelming and he can get an idea of popularity."
Above all, Ogden-Barnes sees it as vital that jewellery retailers put extra time and effort into providing 'expert consultation'
with male shoppers.
"Let's talk about your wife - does she like gold? Do you know what's already in her jewellery box? Does she like coloured stones? Have some of these questions, show some pictures, and get to a point of understanding to ensure the piece is actually suitable for her. I'm sure that mums the world over have a drawer full of crappy earrings. If she ends up with something she actually likes she'll seek out your store."
Teenage sons and daughters are another group retailers need to woo for Mother's Day sales, and Ogden-Barnes believes having an in-store 'generation specialist' will do the trick.
"Teenagers are a very novice category when it comes to buying for mum - they won't know the difference between various kinds of metals, for example - so ask them the same questions, become an adviser for the youth generation, or utilise a salesperson who is representative of their age group."
Sound advice, but to get to the selling stage retailers need to entice dads, sons and daughters into their store in the first place.
This is where Marcus Hancock comes in. Hancock is the director of marking consulting firm MJH Group in Melbourne. Crafting plans for jewellery retailers is a big part of his business.
"The main things to remember are to advertise early, promote jewellery at 'good, better, best' price points to capture all budgets, and whatever you put in an advert, make sure you have plenty of that exact item. Consumers aren't necessarily imaginative enough to transfer a desire to a different product - they'll want exactly what they've seen."
When it comes to advertising methods, Hancock believes the old-fashioned letterbox drop is still a good one.
"Delivering printed catalogues is a very cost-effective way of reaching a highly targeted market-base. It costs perhaps a couple of thousand to do the production and distribution but you get to plaster the area with your message."
Hancock continues: "If you're doing a letterbox drop you need to tie it back to your store by putting the same signage in the window.
People may not read your catalogue, but they'll often flick through it and form an impression of what your store is about, so when they're out shopping and see your signage, it feels familiar and safe. If you feature kids in your catalogue, make sure they look like the majority of your customers. It's not hard to do a separate print run for an area with a large Asian population, for example."
Hancock makes a final point on printed material: "Make sure you have a hero-shot - a nice eye-catching image of a necklace - with smaller images of a matching ring and a matching bracelet around it to plant the idea that people can buy the whole set. All of this is anecdotal, but it gives you an advantage over the next jewellery store".
SMS and email advertising is another highly effective way to reach consumers because it's cheap, immediate and easy to execute.
"If you've got a customer database, send a general Mother's Day message out to everyone, or better still, look at each customer's purchasing history and let them know there's some new jewellery in a similar style or price range that would make a great gift for mum," Hancock says. "Just keep it short and simple and you can't go wrong."
Let's suppose you've come up with a clever advertising plan - now it's time to make your store stand-out for the Mother's Day rush.
Sam Reynolds has been doing the visual merchandising for Westfield and the Myer Centre in Adelaide for several years, and she has some solid advice on sprucing-up jewellery store windows for the occasion.