Verbum.

Motrin’s agency tried to capture some cynical pocket of moms who deride the baby-wearers as a movement, but at the expense of just about every other mom out there. It was too easily foreseeable. You don’t alienate 95% to make 5% relate and laugh. Those 5% aren’t going to be supporting your pensions.

I agree that Motrin must be oblivious to the firestorm that is building around them. yes, hell hath no fury like a mommy scorned!

Excellent point on #2. I’m a mom, and in spite of the fact that I’m not a babywearer, that ad came across as the most ridiculously condescending thing I’d seen in a long time. I don’t blame the agency for presenting it as a concept — they’re usually kids looking for something hip and edgy — but what’s wrong with the marketing folks at McNeil who said, “Hey, that’s great! That will really speak to this market!”

Then again, maybe they were right. It *did* speak to the market, just not as they intended.

For me, it wasn’t just about the baby wearing thing—although that was huge & certainly the primary issue for this video. It was the entire campaign. It was the language in general. The term “crazy” appeared in two videos I saw. Other language was patronizing. It was the inappopriate use of saying they understand a mom’s pain. If you are going to SAY you understand, you better damn well understand it, which goes right to your point of focus groups—whether live or via social media, having a target audience member on board, and if you do make a mistake, by all means handle it perfectly—pull the ad, apologize, and try and work with the giant that has bonded together against you.

In other words… I agree with your post. My favorite part? The fact that there are alarming global issues and this is the top-trending twitter group right now. Moms uniting is certainly a strong force.

I’ve seen the Tweets, but I hadn’t watched the ads until just now. As someone who spent 15 years in advertising strategy (and worked with a lot of mothers as my target audiences), I can virtually guarantee every word of those ads came out of a mother’s mouth during a focus group. I can practically hear the conversations. Those ads reek of lazy copywriting (and/or lazy strategy and thoughtless clients).

I’m not trying to defend Motrin’s marketing department or their ad agency, but I highly doubt both teams were seeded with nothing but single men. It’s not about putting a mother on the team. It’s about remembering the basics of talking to your target audience, which includes the knowledge that you are not one of them simply because someone on your team happens to fit the demographic. Lazy marketers let these ads slide when they wanted to get something on the air and forgot a big rule of marketing strategy: Never accept what your target says is truth at face value. Interpretation is critical to creating messages that resonate broadly.

Spot on Shankman! And thanks for bringing it around to the forefront. Yeah, if I were the drug company that makes Motrin, I’d seriously look at hiring someone on my PR team that had a clue about Moms. We are a force to be reckoned with, just ask any of us!

This one backfired, maybe they’ll take a hard look at who’s in charge, of marketing, and do something with the feedback!

Glad that you understand why mothers are upset about this ad. What is truly unfortunately about this is the 5% of women who THINK we are helping PROMOTE Motrin. We are merely bringing this to the attention of Motrin who OBVIOUSLY did not do research on what we really want from a company.

Thanks,
Jen Hinton

i think moms will find any reason to voice thier opinion on something they feel slighted over.

http://www.momdot.com/motrin-laughing-to-the-bank/

trisha

I also think “Chief Mom Officer” isn’t appropriate but for a different reason. Stats are showing, and studies too, current dads are taking on more household responsibilities than the fathers of yesteryear. While I understand the majority of decisions are more likely to be made by the mom, I think concentrating solely on moms, instead of parents, is short sighted given the recent data from time use studies, etc.

I addition to an apology, Motrin could give a donation to relief efforts in Indonesia. After all, that is their business isn’t it? Pain relief?

Dang, you hit the nail. There are SO MANY ways they could have reworded their ad to APPEAL to babywearers instead of mocking a choice that a majority of women are making, which is, to wear their babies!! While this ad doesn’t make me hate Motrin, it does make me sad for the poor ad execs and big wigs who green-lighted this thing. In this job market, it’s not a mistake you should be making!!

Great recap of the issues and the Power of Twitter to spread the word like wildfire. We reported on the issues in the Late AM and continue to cover the story. Mom’s are outraged and rightfully so.
http://www.parentinghelpme.com.....rin-video/

Yes, that’s great advice for Motrin, they should violate the law by discriminating against Director of Marketing candidates who are male or childfree or have older kids.

Wow…what the hell were they thinking?!?!

There were many more ways to get their message across, that would not have offended anyone. Moms who carry babys, Moms who play on the floor with babys, Moms who hold their babys while they sleep, Moms who are just plain ahy from doing soooo many things in a day, etc.

I agree that the best thing for Motrin to do is apologize, and do it quickly. And I hope whomever approved the ad gets their collective hineys kicked, and that the pain lasts a while….because the repurcussions of this ad will too ;-)

While I don’t love being compared to a Borg, I do like that you are seeing the value that mom bloggers have as a collective voice. Katja Presnal’s video in her post says it all…

In this day and age for a company like this to completely alienate their intended target market is absolutely outrageous. Even the smallest bit of market research in this area would have proved to the powers that be at Motrin that they were on the wrong track with this type of Mom-Alogue marketing.

Thanks Shankman for this post.

A lot of people will be surprised, Peter, to find out that I agree with you about the Chief Mom Officer title. Why the surprise? Well, it happens to be my title for the role (paid) I have at Wishpot.com.

In fact, I took that into consideration when the MomForce.com team and I were developing the nomenclature for the site, launching this week (how’s that for timing?). When Moms use MomForce.com and set up their profiles, their experience will be matched to appropriate titles that will both be corporate HR-friendly as well as mom friendly.

So yes, in more common terms, as Chief Mom Officer, my role would be more broadly recognized as a Marketing and Community Manager for Wishpot’s Baby channel.

Weak-ass attempt? Maybe, but the title has certainly garnered me a lot of press as I promote the concept and surely you, Mr. Shankman, of all people and your work with reporters can appreciate that.

Bottom line, there are a lot of talented moms who have decided to stay home with their kids but would add value and insight to companies. We give this role titles because sadly, if you call yourself a blogger, some companies assume you’ll do that kind of work for free. And this assumption, unfortunately, doesn’t just start and end with the “Mommy Bloggers”.

Also, we’re not limiting those who can set up profiles and apply to jobs at http://www.MomForce.com to just Moms. I agree with Devra, more dads are taking on the stay at home parent role everyday. Like any job, it will really come down to who makes the best fit.

Peter, I agree that Motrin needs to apologize and move on. But better yet, maybe they can join the mom conversation, if it’s their target, clearly they need to get to know it better. I’m sure there are a lot of moms that would love to sit at that roundtable discussion.

Hi Peter,

Great post, quickly written too, as this controversy stews…But I have a few counterpoints to offer, from my perspective as a Mom and a marketing consultant.

Re your points #1 and #2 – Hire someone who is part of your target market. Clearly, Motrin has Moms working for them. They probably had Moms on the agency account team and the Motrin brand team. But did they have babywearing Moms who suffered from backaches? Doubtful. Why? By the time it hurts to carry a baby – when they get to 20+ pounds – most working Moms are – well, back at work. They’re not carrying a baby around 24×7.

If marketers think someone who claims to know “Moms” is an expert in “Moms,” they’ve got it all wrong. There are many different sectors of the Mom market — and the natural, green, babywearing, attachment parenting Moms are a unique group.

And the truly ironic thing? Motrin could have developed an ad about relieving back pain due to babycarrying — targeted at Moms AND DADS (50% of the total addressable market) that did not offend.

I taught parenting classes prior to being a parent and did so competently. Why?Because I gave a rats ass and wanted to do a good job. Certainly this is what should be looked at when hiring someone to do a campaign geared toward a specific audience, not whether or not the Director of Marketing is a parent. While the mommy wars seem to have dissipated a lot, the new “war” may turn out to be pitting parents against non-parents, and I would hate to see all of us go down that road. All human beings have carework we do, whether it be self-care, childcare or kitty care. ; )
While in some situations it might help to have a certain type of life experience, I think the bottom line is more about giving a damn about what you are doing and why it really matters in the big picture. To me, Motrin just lost sight of the big picture.

The title “Chief Mom Officer” is not something that I “invented” in my blog post. There are companies already who have hired people with this title, the first one was Jessica Smith for http://www.wishpot.com and Jessica has been revolutionizing the concept and you will be able to learn more about it at http://www.MomForce.com, launching this week, which will provide a niche job site that addresses this issue specifically.

Giving the marketing person a title that the target market can better response actually makes the Chief Mom Officer a person who is more approachable by the target market, moms. This person is the one who builds the bridge between a company and target market and is a community member in the mom target market. With a title like Director of Marketing, Chief Marketing Officer etc. the very first step, the community out reach, would be not as easy as with having the “weak-ass” (like you call it) word “mom” in the title.

I have also written about the Chief Mom Officers here:
http://www.skimbacolifestyle.c.....n-how.html

And Jessica Smith, THE Chief Mom Officer, can be found here:
http://jessicaknows.com/

So true about Mommy bloggers. We can latch on and spread the news quick. Seriously, Motrin should’ve known better. As much talk as there has been lately about kids being used as fashion accessories.

Glad to see the post I sent you was spot on.

#motrinmoms ~ 1st Tweets ~ timeline/chart… http://tweetip.us/lktym

I agree that the ad agency and Motrin were woefully misguided in the creative aspects of this ad, and in the monitoring of it after placement. In this day and age, just because it broke on a midnight on Saturday is no excuse for that ad still playing on Sunday morning. Lame, Motrin.

Also agree with the fact that this is not a good demographic to patronize, and cast in a valleygirl voice. “It like, so totally makes me look like an official mom!” Really, Motrin? Is your target market the cheerleading squad?

I disagree that in order for moms to effectively respond to this, we were all “sucking the lifeblood from our children.” Mine have this thing called a Dad, who’s been covering while I try to help get the word out about this. (Although Katja Presnal and Jessica, among many others, are the ones who’ve led the charge in an amazingly effective way.) I hate to nitpick, but I do feel like that language contributes to the feeling that anytime women do something that’s not about their kids it detracts from their role as a mom.

Look forward to hearing you on Sarah’s call tonight.

We totally just got called Borgs… That’s hilarious.

But no, seriously, @#21 Devra… you taught parenting classes without being a parent? That’s like teaching swimming without being able to swim.

Sorry, that should have been #20…

Motrin should have known better yes, but honestly there are more worthwhile issues to get riled up over. Nebraska moms and dads leaving their kids on the state’s doorsteps, Congo women being beaten, raped and killed along with teenagers here in the States being taken as sex slaves.

Really, the mom blogger community could channel their energies towards worthwhile issues but they choose to focus it on a poorly executed Motrin ad. Work to educate the Motrin team and have them re-execute later, but this protest has me wondering about misdirected energy.

I dont care what pull they have, it makes me question their ability to step away from group think. The “strongest-to-band-together-and-form-one-opinion-like-the-Borg” collectives out there” speaks to the group think issue Ive been talking about all along. I’d love to see them think independently for once and just maybe ONE of them stand out for issues that are affecting far more women on a grander scale.

But today is about Motrin. Oh the pain.

What I find so fascinating about the Motrin Moms fiasco is the fact that this isn’t a “Twitter crisis” — it’s a full-blown, old-fashioned PR crisis. Twitter just happens to be the tool or medium by which very unhappy customers are venting their anger. It IS, most definitely, a lesson in the perils of not understanding, appreciating or following the social media outlets that can make — and break — a brand (not to mention the dangers of not testing a campaign fully before it airs).

As a PR professional, we help clients anticipate how their clients or prospects may react to something they are communicating. Quite honestly, I am not certain I would have predicted the intensity of the angry backlash of the Tweets. I frankly was underwhelmed by the ad — it felt cold and inhuman to reduce the experience of motherhood to icons and print words. So, yeah, I’m not surprised the suggestion that babywearing may be “posturing” by some women would go over so poorly, given the lack of soul and humor in the spot.

The fact that the spot is still up on Motrin’s website (these many hours after the tempest began) suggests to me they are not at all on top of this. I predict they have a window of opportunity to correct this situation that will close early tomorrow morning. Having been through loads of crises with clients, I’d counsel them to pull the ad immediately while they’re evaluating next steps, and, as others have wisely counseled, to get a message out to Twitterland that they are working on this. By the time I viewed the ad, I was so pre-disposed to dislike it that I can’t say I was able to view it objectively. That’s why they need to get it down; it has become the news and they’d be far better off taking it off center stage while they plan their response.

Nicely done Peter.

I think what’s also interesting from the agency perspective is that Taxi is the new AOR for Motrin and this is their first campaign out of the gate. Every so often an agency “misses” – lord knows I have – but to miss so profoundly right out of the gate puts them in a tough situation. They’ve literally done a campaign that says “we know moms,” and moms have answered back, “um…no. You don’t.”

I’ll be interested to see not only how the PR folks handle this, but how quickly Taxi either scraps the campaign or adjusts and recovers. They’re a good shop; I’m rooting for them to do the right thing here.

Well written as usual Peter! I was one of the few women that did not find that ad condescending, I found it satirical and probably not the best use of advertising, but did not see how so many women found it to be “putting” down women.

I do think most major companies need to step away from these big PR firms who are out of touch with today’s real life familes and if they are looking to market to these familes and women, then they need to have them on board in assisting with the marketing.

Although I too am not a fan of the term “Chief Mom Officer” I am a fan of the concept and principle for which it stands and think more companies need to embrace it to bring their marketing to a level that will “connect” with their demographic. I believe websites like http://www.momforce.com would be a good place for them to start! And boy would I recommend J&J get a great social media evangelist to help them evaluate what is really going on with today’s moms!

Well, someone at J&J got their butts yanked out of bed. The ad has been pulled down. I pity the kids at Taxi. Wouldn’t put that one in the portfolio.

Ugh. I still cringe over being labeled a “Mommy blogger” especially when we all get lumped together like this. It brings to mind visions of an army of women in capri yoga pants, baby in a sling, keys to the SUV in one hand and a caramel mocchiata in the other, like Dawn of the Dead meets Desperate Housewives.

When I wrote my blog post about my take on the whole thing, I had only seen two posts about it. I lost a hard drive so I haven’t been on Twitter all weekend and didn’t even know about #motrinmoms until after I published my blog post.

In other words, we’re all free-thinking intelligent individuals, a fact that this agency seems to have overlooked. If they wanted to address the problem of back pain caused by baby-wearing, they should have asked around and talked to a few of those moms.

Personally, my baby sling days are over because my youngest (and final) child is now 6. And while I prefer some aspects of attachment parenting, I’m not rabid about it. Its just something I did for me and my kids. Its not for everyone.

Having said that, my problem with the Motrin ad isn’t the issue of baby-wearing and back pain. Its the fact that they mocked it with their McCain-esque air quotes around “supposedly” and made the snarky comment about wearing a baby sling making us look like “official” moms as if there’s any such thing as an un-official mom.

Still, I don’t think it deserves all of this uproar. It was a bad idea and it’ll factor into my future decisions when it comes to buying pain relievers but I tend to buy generic anyway. Hey if Coca Cola can survive New Coke and Tylenol can move past the whole cyanide thing, I think Motrin will be just fine. Pull the ad and move on.

remember, ibuprofen is the generic name, and it’s often a lot cheaper (and just as effective) in generic form.

I was one voice in the Mommy Mass crying foul over the Motrin ad, and I am totally satisfied that the ad has been pulled and our opinions were taken seriously.
I am not out for blood and I think we can all drop it now. I do not advocate trying to “make them pay!” for an honest mistake.
True true, there are hundreds of more important issues in the world today that bloggers should be promoting.
I don’t take medicine that much anyway.

So the parenthetical joke of the day goes something like this, what do you call a company that is oblivious to new media? A motrin. What do you call a company that didn’t learn from Motrin’s mistake? Bankrupt.

…one question keeps pinging me, if these guys were blindsided by new media and social networking, how many other companies are about to be blindsided too?

“this story will be dead by Tuesday” Just about the time it reaches mainstream news. :)

It seems everyone, myself included, has blogged about the Motrin Moms dust up this weekend. I’d say the clean up is not yet done.

1) They need to post the apology from the marketing veep responsible for Motrin on http://www.motrin.com now rather than leave a dark screen. In fact, the veep should shot an apology video like the CEO of JetBlue did over their Valentines Day screw up… that’s STILL building them goodwill with customers.
2) They need to reach out to their customers to form a consumer advisory council which would help them avoid problems like this in the future.
3) They need to recognize they no longer have sole control of their brand — they can only steer it. Instead they should create an online forum where their customers can discuss their products.

Sanity in a Motrin post – thanks Peter.

It’s an interesting case study in advertising/PR/social media and monitoring. I guess we give kudos to Kathy Widmer and her team for their Sunday form letter and action to slow the burn (maybe you’ll do another post or Tweet on that, but I’m kind of ready for this one to go away).

I’m with you – I have never expected much from advertising since art/commerce of Apple “1984″ or VW “Pink Moon” or various cool European ads.

It was an interesting weekend meme, yielding some passionate posts/tweets, but it made me think we all miss Election intensity a little bit ;)

Great post Peter. While I don’t think the ads were as offensive as others ads out there I do agree that Motrin could have had a better focus group. My disappointment with Motrin-gate is that I wish women would take other issues as seriously. Say for instance: domestic violence. October was DV awareness month. Doing a search on twitter turns up a dismal mention of it. Yesterday there were people that were happy about the Motrin site being down. Really, let’s get happy when statistics on DV change. 1 out of 3 womem are victims of domestic violence – one of those women is someone we know.

Peter,

Love HARO — as well as your perspective. If you are going to mess up, don’t do so with one of the most connected, viral and action-oriented communities out there.

I blogged about your take this morning. http://tinyurl.com/5ng3l7

Thanks for this and HARO.

Mark Story

Jami, that’s a pretty strong implication that women don’t take other issues seriously, don’t you think? Search the mom blogs and you’ll find efforts to battle breast cancer, illiteracy, natural disasters, autism, childhood diseases, and yes, domestic violence. In just recent memory, close to $7000 has already been raised to help women through the BlogHers act effort and I’ve seen women rally and raise thousands in the Nie Nie auctions to support a family seriously hurt in a plane crash.

In the case of the Motrin ad, it was a social media campaign, promoted via social media, and so consumers responded via social media. Perhaps advocates of domestic violence prevention efforts could also figure out how to better tap into the blog world?

Hey Peter,
Last night on the teleseminar you totally railed on Motrin’s agency for not doing the right thing. Who is to say they didn’t try? I would suggest that everyone will have their “aha” moment where they’ll get the implications of SN and 2.0 – and this happens to be Motrin’s.

Also, I find it curious that you bitched how the “motringate” took up your whole day and was nothing more than a bad note in an opera, but didn’t you contribute to the hype by not turning off the various immediate response devices and going to the pool? This all seems to be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. We have created these networks that catch people screwing up, so that we can further feed the networks and at the end of the day – not have a balanced life?

I realize this isn’t going to be popular with your readers, but I take issue with the notion that J&J pissed off their target market. Rather, they pissed off that portion of their market that blogs and twitters, which is still something of a self-selecting group. There’s a little bit of blogger triumphalism here, which I always find annoying. Blog firestorms can happen quickly, and often reflect a mob mentality. Dismissing their ad agency as a bunch of 20-something hipsters hardly represents rigorous thinking. Does anyone really know anything about their ad team? And really, why is everyone so sure that one mom in a marketing department would have put a stop to this? The offensive nature of the ad is quite overblown, and I think it’s misguided to believe that any mom would have immediately seen this as offensive.

I’m a man, and I fail to see the outrage, but if women are outraged then I guess I’ll take their word for it. But the notion that a company should immediately pull an ad because a bunch of bloggers are up in arms is just silly. I’m on blogs all day, so I’m not some Luddite here. But I think too many people think bloggers now rule the world. We sawe the same thing recently with so many bloggers thinking they speak for th entire electorate. There’s no question that blogs and, to a lesser extent, Twitter, are powerful channels. But I would guess that the vast majority of J&J’s target market doesn’t blog, doesn’t read mommy blogs, and doesn’t Twitter.

I’m guessing that moms who blog are generally computer and verbally adept and have strong opinions. But the notion that mom bloggers represent all moms is just silly. Of course J&J will take the ad down, because companies aren’t going to live and die with one ad. A bunch of angry letters might well have had the same effect. I’d be interested to see a survey of a broad cross section of women and see just how offensive most women find this. I mean, ads insult my intelligence every day. It doesn’t mean I want to burn the company down. And the suggestion that the marketing VP needs to do an apology video is just silly, and an example of how overblown this entire issue is.

You know what a small segment of mommybloggers do best?

Then turn and attack when one doesn’t stay in lock step and agree with them.

Because if Mom101 took a moment to try and understand what Jami meant…well they may have had a conversation instead of Mom101 looking like she’s lecturing Jami. (Note: It looks that way because she is.)

That’s not building community no matter how much you point at the last paragraph of the comment and pretend it is.

Another comment says 95% of moms were offended. Not by a long shot. I’ve gotten an overwhelmingly positive response for my blog post against the people who are against the Motrin ad. Seriously. I’m up to 50 emails and direct tweets since last night when I posted. People are so scared to speak out they have to thank me in private.

Don’t these moms understand that doesn’t make a majority but a feared minority?

You bet that Mommy blogs have a strong voice online but the bigger point it is this: don’t underestimate the viral impact of a lone blogger (who belongs to a strong online community) AND please, please, please monitor the ‘Net for what’s being said about your topic. When will big companies understand this? Corporations look at sites like Twitter and think, hmmm, whatever will I do with that? Well, trust me. There’s more going on there than a lone person talking about washing their cat.

Thanks for the traffic to my site from yours. Woop! Getting lots of hits on my opposite opinion.

trisha
http://www.momdot.com

Why are we all sucked in by this fantasy that every moment of motherhood is pure joy? What’s there to get angry about? Isn’t the Motrin ad just being honest? What are people so afraid of?

I agree that they need to get someone on board that understands the “mom market”. In my opinion, it doesn’t have to be a mom provided they are connected to the mom-blogger community and have the pulse of that industry. Ok, I’ll just put it out there, I have worked in the space and was hoping to get the gig. :-)

Motrin.com isn’t responding for me right now, but if the baby-wearing ad is anything like the one about shoes or the one about bags, the whole campaign is condescending – all of the individual parts are predicated on the idea that the user is deliberately doing something damaging but won’t address the root problem.

Funny, when my back hurt from wearing my daughter in my schwing, I didn’t even think to take Motrin.

Fabulous – you make me laugh…EXCEPT: The Chief Mom Officer concept and position was created by an uber-powerful Mom named Jessica Smith http://www.jessicaknows.com and it’s become quite powerful. I hate that the fact that ‘mom’ is in the title, makes it seem unprofessional to you or anyone else…It’s why people despise the ‘mommy blogger’ title, myself included, yet – look at the force and the power we have that even you readily acknowledge. Still it is the dominant trend…maybe it will change and mom’s will actually get some respect. Hmmm.

@25 While parenting skills and swimming skills both can be taught , I don’t think teaching parenting and teaching swimming is an apples to apples comparison. The mechanics of a backstroke are essentially the same for anyone learning it while I believe parenting is unique to every family. It’s a relationship between people and each person has their own perspective on that relationship.

Prior to being a parent, I taught parenting from the perspective most familiar to me at the time; that of the child. However, I didn’t rely merely on my own childhood experiences but experiences of the hundreds of children with whom I worked. (And in some respects, I still teach parenting from that perspective, even though I am now a parent.)

In my opinion, this is where my field, social work, and PR/Advertising are somewhat similar, it’s not about who I am, it’s about the client and the relationships they have, or want to foster, with other people.

I also blogged about the Motrin situation. http://www.parentopia.net/blog. In a nutshell Regardless of whether one wears a baby or not, the ad was a misstep and, until I read some of the comments here, I really thought it wasn’t creating a parent versus non parent response. It’s not about who is a parent, it’s about whether the ad did what it was intended to do. In this case, it looks to me like it didn’t. That’s all. The ad should not serve as a platform on which to stand and look down upon anyone else’s parenting and this is actually why I supported the ad being removed from circulation.

Motrin’s mis-step makes a perfect reminder:

* It’s still International Babywearing Week (Nov. 12-18).
* There are still needy mamas out there who don’t have slings to help them hold their babies close.

If you felt Motrin’s misdirected ad was worthy taking the time to complain about, don’t forget to take a positive step, as well: donate a sling to a needy family.

Seriously, I’m amazed at the intensity of response to an ad. I am a mom and a marketer and I used a sling when my son was little. You know what, it did give me a shoulder ache sometimes. So I don’t feel offended, slighted, or anything else. This is really no different than the Calgon Take Me Away premise. No one got up in arms when Calgon suggested that you needed a break from the kids/husband/house, etc. If we could take all this indignation and focus it on something constructive (think child abuse, hurricane Ike victims, drunk driving) think what could be accomplished.

Honestly, there probably are a lot of moms and dads that agree with the premise of the Motrin ad. There are a LOT of baby carriers out there that put undue strain on the back, especially when they are not properly adjusted. I see them on the streets of New York frequently with the baby hanging loose away from the body and think “That’s GOTTA HURT!”

There are also a LOT of baby carriers out there that DO hurt your back, and they’re some of the best-marketed and best-branded ones. So I simply assumed that was who the marketing was targeting. Afterall, any baby wearer worth her salt has done the research to know that those trendy well-branded baby carriers ARE a pain in the back. And the shoulders. And the hips. And the breasts.. And everywhere. So if someone is simply babywearing as a trend, they are gonna feel the pain.

I just sort of shrugged it off the way I shrug off formula or other “convenience” food advertisements that place the value of sleep or a 10 minute time savings over the value of proper nutrition.. They’re not targeting me, I’ll ignore it.

The ad was a FAIL for a number of reasons. It didn’t connect with the audience –worse, it pissed a large number of them off. Just because they are bloggers and twitterers, and responded in that fashion, to assume (as a commenter above does) that they aren’t reflective of a broader parenting population is a mistake. I hazard a guess that the ad might have irritated the non-tweeting babywearing parent too; it just would have taken a little bit longer.

Worse, of course, is that it sure looks like the agency and the client didn’t do its due diligence. A little bit of online listening might have prevented the whole snafu. As Mom101 commented, let’s see what they do now.

Earthquake in Indonesia and fires here in So.Cal. … twitter was indeed taken over by #motrinmoms. While the Motrin ad was totally off target I think they’ve gotten the message by now…. It’ll be an interesting case study in social media and something to learn from but it’s time to move on.

Damn, I seriously can’t believe that ad pissed off so many people. I’m a mom, and a blogger, and a baby wearer (some of the time) – and yeah, my back friggin hurts sometimes. I think anyone who’s upset or offended by this ad should lighten the hell up!

As a registered nurse, consultant, and mom- I was alerted to this ad by the many outraged moms on twitter. Although I haven’t banned Motrin from my home, I do feel that there is a huge need for education about their target audience. I advise apologizing for their error and hiring an experienced, educated consultant who happens to be an INVOLVED parent and really understands the issues parents face.

There are plenty of educated moms who have professional experience now well rounded by parenting experience. You have seen the negative side of a powerful group like Twitter Moms. Now work with them and watch how influential moms can be!

Since this is Ibuprofen we are referring to, probably also good to choose a mom who reaches for the Motrin monthly and truly understands the power of Motrin!

So don’t buy stuff from Motrin. Is this really something to get upset about? Baby carriers really must be the most delicate people on the planet.

I’ll be buying Motrin from now on for all my pain-relief needs.

I’m a mom blogger, but I’m also a paid business blogger, community blogger and design blogger. I wore both babies and believe in the practice, but as a pr strategist as well as the founder of an organization that supports & advises mom-owned businesses, I wonder if the way this whole controversy was handled by a few vocal moms sets us back instead of advances our goals. I understand what my fellow tweeps were doing, I really do, and I support their passion. Yet feel it is unfortunate that their collective actions only perpetuated some of the negative stereotypes about mom bloggers, and about moms on Twitter. We *should* be taken seriously, because we *are* a force to be reckoned with… but while being loud and reactive may bring you immediate satisfaction, it can also come with counterproductive long-term effects. In no way do I see Motrin pulling the ad as a “win” for mom bloggers or Twitter moms. That it brought forth conversations that might not have happened otherwise, that I can see as a positive from this.

Listen, if Dooce had written the same thing, all of the people who are all outraged would have been laughing. Lesson to be learned: you are not Dooce, Motrin. And mommies get pissed if you try to be.

It’s amazing to see how this all has unfolded over the last few days. There are clearly some lessons that PR people need to learn. Namely, that we’re not a 9-5, M-F society. Bloggers keep blogging on the weekend, so companies need to continue listening as well. If Motrin had done a better job of responding, perhaps they would have been able to respond better. Instead, we got a lame apology on Sunday, followed by the same message posted on their website Monday afternoon. The response doesn’t seem really deal with the problem head on.

Lesson #2: Be careful what you wish for. I’m sure Motrin hoped their campaign would “go viral.” Boy, did it. But, the company didn’t understand the ramifications of its ad. Going viral like this is not good for business.

We’re writing about lessons learned over on our blog. I’d be interested in hearing more from PR people about what we can take from this so we can all be more prepared next time something goes wrong.

So glad I got to hear all this straight from the horses mouth on PRSarahEvans teleseminar. You, Sarah, Jason and Aaron did a great job reviewing what the company did wrong, more importantly what their ad agency did wrong, and what had the motrinmoms buzzing. Great job!

Thanks, Peter, for covering the Motrin thing. I am a mommy blogger, a baby-wearer, and a HARO-subscriber. While moms have organized over similar issues before using blogs and email groups, this is the first big thing that was Tweeted. In fact, the whole thing was over (apology and all) before the news of the ad really had a chance to spread through the usual channels. Some of us barely had time to become incensed, much less blog.

I’ve experienced several “mom-uprisings”, mostly in the form of Nurse-ins, and I’ve thought it would be neat to consult with businesses on how to avoid such public relations disasters.

And for the record, if baby wearing hurts, you’re doing it wrong.

nearly offtopic:

When I have a child and blog about it, then I’m a mommy blogger? I’m a man, man! What now?

;o)

Same as post #67… except I’m a dad, not a mommy. ;)

Peter, thank you for writing an informative and useful post to your expanding blog. This story has recently gained ample attention across the Internet, most importantly on Twitter and blog sites. I enjoyed reading your stance on the situation and also your tips in aiding others to not make the same mistake were very relevant and practical. You were wise in your writing to maintain an inoffensive stance on the situation while providing your own input into the story. Much of your opinion is backed by current trends and is also reflective of some of my own points. I agree with your argument about “Mommy-Bloggers” and that they truly are influential, not only due to their frequency of posting, but also due to the community aspect they feel and relate to online. Also your idea about using a mother in a position of power is a great point as this seems like an act of utter disregard by the company or agency to acknowledge a now-common technique practiced in marketing, gaining constant insight from the audience themselves. Could this just have been a campaign by Motrin that came about with all “gut feeling” and no substantial evidence to support it? It sure seems that way judging from the negativity that has sparked all of this. But then again, how could a company under a division of Johnson & Johnson make such a large mistake with their target audience?
AdAge’s story on the topic does bring about a topic worthy of noting, that the online ad has been out for a few weeks now and it has not been controversial until now. Perhaps this is because some powerful social networkers have recently picked up the problematic story to spread to others. It already seems that issues like this arise all of the time, stemming from the fact that those with influence, like widely read bloggers, are able to dictate what their readers see or hear. It is interesting to ponder how many ads could potentially fall victim the same way as this Motrin ad if they were all to be discussed so widely. Thank you for this insightful and educational post and I look forward to reading more of your scholarly advice in the future.

Peter

I agree the Motrin ad was stupid and patronizing. Hell I’m a guy and I can see that. BUT — I honestly think Motrin screwed up in their response. Here is why.

First, while the Twitterati was all up in arms and mommy bloggers were pissed, that is a fraction of all moms out there. So in terms of a retail backlash, there probably wasn’t going to be a Motrin boycott tomorrow. In fact, I’m running a poll right now on the subject and so far, of 70 Internet savvy moms that have taken the poll, NOT ONE had a clue about the whole Motrin thing.

Second, because Motrin overreacted and just yanked the campaign and tried to shut the news cycle down, they lost the chance to engage the mommy community in a conversation. Instead of pulling the campaign (which I think has been up for a bit over 6 weeks) they should have invited mommy bloggers and moms for that matter to enter into a conversation at the Motrin site.

Given how bad the ad is, Motrin and their agency Taxi, could obviously use the insight. Now, because of antiquated PR thinking (oh god, upset vocal consumers) and a lack of real context (twitter/blog readers are a small fraction of all moms) they’ve stubbed their toe and have nothing to show for it. Had they left the campaign up (at least on the internet) and invited conversation or better, asked for conversation via their site, twitter, blogs or how they responded to news media inquiries — they would have learned something valuable and might have even gotten better props than they have by shutting down the campaign.

If you or your readers are interested in the results of the poll, I’ll be publishing via twitter this week. Just follow @brandmarken

Agree to all of your points – and it was a laughable debacle. But just one thought – I exist on the Agency side and have often heard from clients: “there is NO room for your insights and you will execute as we tell you” (from a very very very large and very very profitable global corporation, though they never achieved what they should have w/their campaigns…wonder why?) there are many times when I wonder – just what was client dictated? Food for thought, but then shame on the Agency! :D

Tom Martin, I couldn’t disagree with you more. The fact that Motrin acted swiftly to pull the ad is the REASON 70% of the “internet savvy moms” you polled didn’t hear about this.

Had the ad continued to run, the babywearing advocates would have had ample opportunity to get a plan in order and help turn this into a mainstream media story, ala the Delta airlines breastfeeding debacle.

Your poll is irrelevant. What it proves, if anything, is that Motrin did exactly the right thing.

Agreeing with Mom101. Motrin got the warning, they acted, story over. Damage minimal. That’s all Tom Martin’s poll will prove. Should they have done more due diligence in the first place? Clearly. But every screw-up presents an opportunity, so let’s hope they take it to come up with something funny that DOES resonate with moms.

Once is a mistake. Twice would be a pattern.

Mom101

Maybe… but you missed the point of my comment. The point was that while the Twitterati and Mommy Bloggers want to claim this was an outpouring tsunami that Motrin was smart to respond to… the data doesn’t support the claim.

As of 11-20-08, 150 moms have completed my poll. 5 of them knew about the Motrin flap. None were pissed enough to do anything like boycott, tell others to boycott, etc. And of the roughly 1,500 tweets tracked to #motrinmoms, only 70′ish were clearly negative in tone. Almost 100 were actually positive – though these seem to be mostly from men. And the vast majority — over 1,300 were neutral — mostly pointing folks to other places someone had posted on the topic, replying to other twitter posts, etc. And as of Monday, there were somewhere between 300-500 blog posts. The blogosphere didn’t erupt till Wed, when the post level grew to over 3,000 but again, most were marketing and social media pundits riffing on the entire episode.

My point is that marketers have become oversensitive to “bad press” and thus they just circle the wagons versus considering how best to react. Would this have spread to mainstream news, get picked up by Today Show, Oprah, etc? Maybe, but that wasn’t going to happen this week — there just wasn’t enough mainstream chatter yet. Motrin had time. Time to do something other than just pull the ads.

What they should have done was taken the time to fully understand the issue, engage folks like yourself and figure out how to engage folks like the 150 moms that took my poll and learn from the episode. Where mommy bloggers really speaking for all moms? Did non-bloggers feel the same about the ads? And most importantly, what should the ads have said/done to engage this important Motrin target audience. Instead, what they did was simply react and thus lost the chance to really learn from the mistake (yes I agree with the mommy bloggers — ad was pretty stupid).

Tom, What I take issue with is that you are looking at all moms as equals. In marketing, some consumers are considered influencers. Some are opinion leaders. In the mom world, the bloggers are very much influencers, and it makes perfect sense that Motrin would act swiftly to respond them before the story had a chance to make it to Oprah.

I look at the removal of the ad as the short-term tactic–and hopefully, as you’re suggesting, they’re now regrouping and determining how to engage the audience in the long term.

I’ve been in advertising close to 20 years, and I’ve seen ads pulled for far less. In this case however, I think it was prudent.

Mom101

If you are correct and mommy bloggers are influencers, and it was the mommy bloggers that started this wave — then why are 145 out of 150 of my internet savvy moms clueless?

Mommy bloggers only influence their own tribes of followers. I can’t see how many readers you have on your blog (nice by the way) and you have a respectable 1,187 followers on Twitter — that is a long way from influencer of all moms.

If a mom isn’t reading you – you don’t exist in her world and therefore you can’t influence her. Like you, I’ve been in the biz for 20 years and I’ve written the “we’re so sorry letters” over much less. But that doesn’t change the facts.

This outcry was a vocal minority. Go check out my data http://www.tommartin.typepad.com and at the bottom of the article is a link to another independent analysis that was just reported today. They came up with similar data to mine.

More companies should apologize as cleanly, personally, and directly as McNeil Labs did. Too many companies worry about whether they are “right” or not; whether their conduct truly rises to the level of requiring an apology. This is the wrong question becuse it focuses attention on what the company intended rather than the effect on the target audience. Effective apology is valuing the relationship more than the need to be right. When we get this, apology becomes
easier. Then it’s a matter of execution, which McNeil did elegantly. The apology was quick, direct, and personal. An individual stepped up and took personal responsibility and didn’t mince words about it.

I haven’t read the comments, so I apologize if this message has already been put into words. But one reason it’s so easy to tweet about big corporate Motrin and not about earthquakes (which I really just heard about here) is because there’s nothing we can do about an earthquake. Lots of people dead, death and destruction, mothers and husbands and Children’s lives ruined and destroyed by natural forces. Yeah- let’s not tweet about that, let’s just be glad it wasn’t us and send a few dollars to the red cross via paypal. The Motrin thing was a human decision to insult another group of humans. We saw a situation where our voices could rise above the anti-mom message in their ads and spoke up. Certainly if Motrin was sending $1 to the earthquake victims for every #earthquake tweet, moms would have tweeted and retweeted and spread way more love than anger.

Tom Martin – Protest movements nearly always start with a vocal minority. In this case, Twitter moms who pointed out the problems with the Motrin ad. Motrin did the smart thing and listened. And hopefully they will do better next time.

Would that our leaders had paid such close attention in the 60s to *the* vocal minority opposed to Vietnam…

Tom, my blog certainly does not reach the whole world of mothers.

But how about when one of my avid readers is the editor-in-chief of a major women’s magazine? Or a lifestyle editor of the NY Times? Or an executive producer of The View?

Things get interesting then…

Mom101

Well now, then it does get a bit interesting doesn’t it. But that is the crux of my point. Motrin acted is if the story WOULD go there and go there quickly. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. But even then, would all moms be offended or just those that use baby slings? And that was the point — they had to time to think it through and respond. Instead, they just pulled it and offered an apology so they’ll never know.

And to respond to the 60′s comment on another post — yes all movements start with a few committed people but if they can’t engage a majority the movement stalls or dies.

I agree with Comment #6 and post #91. Working myself as a Web, Marketing and Business Development consultant, a mom and blogger, I agree that I am certain that their advertising department and R&D people did interview moms. But yes, I am happy to know that the apology was swift.

I must admit that when I made my post covering this topic (watch the video here http://bit.ly/PEhC) part of me agreed that baby carriers can be paint IF you don’t find that right one but the problem was the it was so poorly executed, that ad ended up pissing off that audience it aimed to attract.

As a mother, this ad is MOST offensive. “What about ME?” Come on…people. Who were the ad wizards that came up with this one? Why don’t they actually ask a mother before concepting this type of ad?

Wow, had to go watch that one on Youtube to find out what everyone was talking about. Totally understand the outrage generated from that remarkable commercial. They obviously did it to try and connect with moms, but boy did they mess it up.

Does anyone really expect these ads to be completely honest and politically correct 100% of the time. They are in the business of selling you a product. Sometimes lines get crossed. Life goes on.