For Mother's Day 2026, we ran 25 billboards across the Twin Cities. No models. No stock photos. Just real Homestead Road team members and their real moms. We partnered with Clear Channel Outdoor to place the boards across Minneapolis and the metro. The message was simple: Home Begins With Mom.
Here's why we did it.
If you were anywhere near Hennepin Avenue, I-394, Uptown, or the south metro yesterday, you might've seen one of our team members on a billboard. Right next to them was the person who raised them.
That wasn't a model. That was somebody's actual mom.
Why a billboard campaign about moms?
We buy houses across Minnesota. Have since 2007. More than 3,500 Minnesota homes bought as-is for cash, no realtor fees, no repairs, no showings.
But here's the thing. When we sit down at someone's kitchen table, the conversation is almost never about the house. It's about the home. And nine times out of ten, that story starts with a mom.
A mom who turned a house into a home. A mom whose handwriting is on the recipe card stuck to the fridge. A mom whose china is still in the cabinet, even though she's been gone for years.
So this spring, we built a campaign about her. Not about us.
The brief to our creative team was short:
What our team sent back was the best part of the project. Photos from three continents. Black-and-white pictures from the 1990s. One coworker with his mom on the day he became a father. Another with the foster mom who took her in at 14.
That gave us our hero composition. Nine portraits side by side. One headline: HOME BEGINS WITH MOM.
Twenty-five billboards across the metro is not a small lift. We needed a partner who could move fast and place the boards where Minneapolis actually drives.
We worked with Clear Channel Outdoor. They run one of the biggest billboard networks in the Twin Cities. Digital and static. City and suburbs.
A few reasons that mattered:
If you're thinking about billboards for the first time, a quick honest take. They're not a "click here now" channel. Don't measure them that way. What they do is make a whole city feel something about your brand at once. For three days, the people of Minneapolis drove past one of our coworkers and their mom. That's not a click. That's a memory.
A few takeaways. Useful if you're a marketer, or just curious how a project like this comes together.
1. Real beats polished. The boards that got shared most weren't the most "designed" ones. They were the ones that looked most like a regular family photo. A slightly grainy iPhone picture beat every studio version we tested.
2. The team felt it. I'll be honest. I underestimated how much this would mean to our coworkers. People sent the boards to their moms. Moms sent them to their sisters. One of our team members' moms cried when she saw herself on a billboard on her way to the grocery store. That moment doesn't show up in a report. It's the reason we'll do this again.
3. A campaign is a values statement. Putting our people on 25 boards across the city was a way of saying out loud what we actually believe. Not actors. Not executives. Not even our logo first. Just our team and their moms. Because homes are about people, and the people who built ours deserve to be seen.
Thank you. For the dinners. The carpools. The advice we ignored and later realized was right. Thank you for being the first definition of home any of us ever had.
And to everyone who drove past a board yesterday and thought, "That looks like my mom" … it probably did. That was the whole point.
Happy Mother's Day from all of us at Homestead Road.
Saw one of our boards? We'd love to see your photo. Tag us on social or email marketing@homesteadroad.com. We're putting together a wrap-up reel.
Homestead Road has been buying houses in Minnesota since 2007. More than 3,500 homes and counting. We pay cash, close on your timeline, and buy houses as-is. No cleaning. No repairs. No showings. No realtor fees. If you've been thinking about selling, we'd love to talk. Get a free, no-obligation cash offer.
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