Motin Ad
Johnson & Johnson did manage to offend some mothers with an online and print campaign for Motrin that implied moms carry their babies as fashion accessories. But was it a genuine groundswell that felled the effort — or an alliance of the few, empowered by microblogging service Twitter? Two days after a new ad push for Motrin triggered an online backlash, J&J’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit is pulling the campaign, from the New York office of independent shop Taxi, and begging a vocal mommy-blogging nation for forgiveness. >>Full Story
Thoughts// If you’re still not convinced of the power of social media and our countless examples on this blog, this article is a must read. Motrin recently pulled a campaign for the pain medication that was supposed to connect with moms through the common experience (and pain) of carrying a child. In doing so however, they managed to imply that moms carry their babies as “fashion accessories” to “look like an official mom” and managed to enrage the community. A deluge of negative response in the blogger community and the twitter community amongst moms resulted in Motrin realizing their error and pulling the campaign. The culmination of the backlash resulted when a New York blogger and proprietor of online children’s store Skimbaco, featured the tweets from offended moms and produced a YouTube titled “Motrin Ad Makes Moms Mad” (featured below; for those reading on email, click here)
How could Motrin have avoided this fiasco? With hindsight being what it is, my humble opinion is that they should have taken a page from Pepsi (see our post on Pepsi’s social re-branding efforts). Specifically:
- Before launching a new campaign, why not engage with the folks you’re trying to empathize with? Talk to groups like Twitter Moms or countless moms who blog and get feedback about what it feels like to carry a child and how they deal with the pain (if any)
- Engage them in the creation process; gather the most influential bloggers and twitter users and use them as a “test lab” in the creation process
To Motrin’s credit, the campaign has been taken down and the company issued an immediate apology that’s featured on their website.
“On behalf of McNeil Consumer Healthcare and all of us who work on the Motrin brand, please accept our sincere apology…we are in the process of removing this ad from all media. It will, unfortunately, take a bit of time to remove it from our magazine advertising, as it is on newsstands and in distribution.” – Kathy Widmer, VP of Marketing.
It’s noteworthy that the first Google search result for “Motrin” results in a story about this fiasco.
8 Comments
November 18, 2008 at 9:55 pm
I’m a mom with a 2-1/2 year old and it doesn’t make me mad. If anything I think it refers to the celebrities out there who tote around their tots for the paparazzi, not the typical mom who is the target of their ad. (have you not see the photos in Us Weekly or People where it is like, Angelina Jolie with her designer sling???) I think people are just looking for something to complain about. Geeze people! I thought the ad was sarcastically cute. Guess I’m the weird one!
November 19, 2008 at 5:55 am
Hi Katie,
Thanks for the comment. In reading some of the tweets on the subject, you are certainly not alone, quite a few moms felt the same way about the campaign.
The underlying point from this article is how quickly social media users, in this case via Twitter, were able to influence a major organization.
I think your comment about people looking for something to complain about holds some truth.
From the Motrin perspective, perhaps they reacted too quickly. As we mentioned, users were defending the ad on Motrin’s behalf. Would there have been less press and hype about the ‘motrinmoms’ if Motrin did not apologize and pull the campaign in such a public fashion?
We are not saying that Motrin should have been quiet on the subject, kudos for being so transparent and public about the process. However, would enough consumers come to Motrin’s defense to counteract the ‘motrinmoms?’ Possibly, but in the world of instant tweets, can organizations afford to wait?
- Troy
November 19, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Great point Troy. It was really interesting to watch how this all unfolded last weekend. Honestly, I can see both sides. Motrin was trying to take a fun, creative spin on things and yet they did fail in not conducing proper community outreach to not only their key demographic, but quite possibly the most influential demographic on the Web today. Given that it did break over the weekend, I think they did a pretty decent job of reacting.
I thought Jeremiah Owyang took an interesting look at it all with his “Categorization of Brand Backlash Storms” – http://tinyurl.com/67n8wv
November 19, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Katie and Scott: Thanks for your comments!
I agree; while I personally thought it was a clever (and attempted empathetic) take on a real problem, I can totally see how moms easily took offense to it. In addition, this might be a good example for the drug industry. TV in particular has become overrun with a plethora of direct to consumer drug company ads for every conceivable ailment that I sometimes wonder what it does to the doctor-patient relationship, a patient’s perception of their ailments and of course health care costs.
Thanks for Jeremy’s categorization url…definitely very intriguing.
November 20, 2008 at 2:14 pm
[...] Owyang and Troy at Travel 2.0 both provided nice assessments of the [...]
November 24, 2008 at 5:16 pm
More follow-up, from Ad Age:
http://adage.com/article?article_id=132787
As we mentioned above, perhaps Motrin was too quick to pull the ad. Unfortunately, they were not listening to any social media outlets, so as the flood of ‘angry’ tweets came across, they pulled the spot…instead of realizing that some of the comments were positive.
Again, what is so amazing, is how quickly this controversy started and finished…within a weekend.
More reasons that you at least need to be listening to social media, even if you don’t want to participate just yet.
Excerpts from the article:
Yet, despite all the fuss, not that many people ultimately paid attention. The two YouTube posts of the actual ad in question (which was removed from Motrin.com) drew a combined 216,000 views through Nov. 21. A YouTube video by mommy blogger and online retailer Katja Presnal piecing together the Motrin protest tweets got 63,556 views.
In fact, most online buzz about Motrin-gate was either positive or neutral in tone toward J&J and the ads, according to analyses by Tom Martin, president of Zehnder Communications, New Orleans, and Lexalytics.
Meanwhile, the core group behind the Twitter storm numbered in the low four figures. A Google search on Monday indicated around 4,000 tweets on Twitter, and analyses by Mr. Martin using Radian6 data and by Lexalytics suggested around 1,500 tweets involving around 1,000 individuals using the #motrinmoms hash tag.
“If Motrin’s brand managers were not just listening to the market, but accurately measuring it too, they might not have been so quick to panic and pull the ad,” Lexalytics said in a blog post. Its analysis found that even among those using the #motrinmoms hash tag on Twitter, only about 35% of the tweets were negative, with the rest neutral or positive toward the ad.
Mr. Martin suggested in his blog that J&J should have kept the campaign in place, apologized to critics in whatever medium they had used to complain, and used the opportunity to engage in dialogue. In a second posting on Motrin.com Nov. 20, Ms. Widmer suggested she intends to do the last part, anyway.
Meanwhile, even some mommy bloggers saw signs the whole episode had hurt their community more than helped it. “Right or wrong, the rest of the web is now rolling its eyes, again, at our community,” Erin Kotecki Vest said on Nov. 17 at QueenofSpainBlog.com. “I’ll be honest, they are right. What happened this weekend went from smart, powerful activism to Palin-rally lynch mob.”
November 24, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Honestly, it’s a dumb ad. If it’s supposed to appeal to moms, then it managed to offend a lot of them. And actually, being a mom who has used both a baby sling and a front carrier in the past, it is actually LESS painful to carry a child in this manner than to try to carry them using just your arms and your hips. It never put more strain on my back and shoulders, baby carriers are actually supposed to help alleviate this. So, the ad misses the mark completely. The ad doesn’t offend me, I just don’t relate to this ad whatsoever, and if moms can’t relate to the ad, then what’s the point?
November 24, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Thanks for the comments clevelandmom.
You get right to the heart of the matter…if it does not appeal to moms, Motrin missed the target.
- Troy