MotrinGate: Twitter Moms Abuzz Over Motrin Video.
November 16, 2008 by Guru
Filed under New Stuff, Parenting and children
At times like this, I am resoundingly thrilled with my decision to leave traditional advertising oh-so-many-moons ago at the dawn of the digital age.
Apparently, they still don’t ‘get it.’ At least whoever created Motrin’s ‘Wearing Your Baby’ video doesn’t get it. And this corporate cluelessness has now exploded into MotrinGate, thanks to legions of Twitter Moms who have been tweeting upthewazoo all weekend. Pity the poor Motrin exec who shows up to Monday morning’s firestorm. Of course, if they had they had the customer service smarts of Zappos, JetBlue, ComcastCares, etc. they would already know about this Mom-fueled fury and they would have apologized, explained or waved a white eco- diaper.
The video “Wearing Your Baby” is still up and running on the official Motrin website. The video claims that this supposed ‘fashion trend’ of carrying baby in a sling causes ‘extreme pain’ — and thus merits Motrin. Not only is the voice-over whiny, annoying and inauthentic but their ‘facts’ are dicey.
Considering how many zillions of Mom marketing firms there out clamoring to help corporate America, (I spent a chunk of this week’s hugely useful WOMMA conference with Mom-savvy Stacy DeBroff of MomCentral) it seems pretty clear that as one tweeter said: “There’s no way a Mom was involved, or if she was, she was ignored.”
Part of the copy: “If I look tired and crazy people will understand.”
If you’d like to follow MotrinGate on Twitter, simply use #MotrinMoms. Currently MotrinMoms is trending #1 on Twitter — and social media mavens are splashing across all media from new to traditional.
As a Springspotter, I’m pinging Liesbeth in Amsterdam with this trend that shows off the incredible power of mobilized Don’t-Mess-With-Me-Moms.
And here’s one of the videos created in response to Motrin’s original video.
Guru’s Take: The lesson here for corporate America? This didn’t have to happen. All you have to do is ask and Moms will help — with your creative, your research, your buzz. We’ve been having Twitter Product Parties – a nifty way to do Social Media Research — and this 21st century style focus group could easily have prevented this corporate boo-boo. Motrin apparently didn’t ask — and now they’re getting stung bigtime.
Guru’s Take #2: Okay, have been researching and from what I can tell, McNeil (maker of Motrin) is a division of Johnson and Johnson . . . and J&J owns the #1 parenting site on the web: Babycenter. So I am wondering why they couldn’t have tapped into that multi-million strong BabyCenter Mom-community?
Guru’s Take #3: Okay, finally a response from the VP at McNeil. (Thank you, Katja, for the post and all your hard work.) Amazing that this semi mea culpa took this long. Amazing that no one from McNeil or the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies appears to be tweeting on the weekend. Even for a complete Twitter newbie, it would have taken all of about a minute for the outraged Motrin tweets to have bubbled up; it was that fast and furious. This whole thing could have been prevented if:
- Someone, anyone, at McNeil (or its agencies) had a clue about social media
- Someone, anyone, at McNeil had a clue about the importance of respecting the VOM (Voice-of-Moms). I’m a veteran market researcher and I cannot imagine letting my clients go without either exploratory pre-production research or post-production eval — hopefully both. I always tell them that research is essentially insurance — it would have prevented McNeil’s 4-Motrin-Migraine.
I’m the first to confess that I never mastered the art of babywearing with my first child (who was born 3 years ago), but watching this commercial made me wince, cringe, and just shake my head…mostly in embarrassment for Motrin. To flat-out state that people carry their babies because it’s ‘in fashion’ – or that they’re sacrificing their comfort and physical well-being for their babies to feel closer to their parents – is not just insulting, but ignorant. To use terms like “they say” and “supposedly” is a slap in the face to the market that they’re looking to appeal to – or rather, “commiserate” with.
I wouldn’t be surprised if someone involved with creating this ad DID speak with moms – but I think it’s safe to assume that those moms would not consider themselves part of the babywearing community. Likely they were moms who were either using the wrong carrier for themselves or were using their carrier incorrectly. Or, hey, they could have been moms who felt it was a ‘fashionable’ thing to do, but never really embraced it – or derived the beneficial results for themselves. In any case, the fact that the ad is still live on the Motrin site just shows how out of touch they really are, especially if they haven’t given this ad a second thought after all of this…shall we say ‘commentary’.
And Motrin research team (if there is one), I’m eager to master this ‘sling/shwing/pouch’ thing with my next baby – and with all of the amazingly wonderful (and ergonomic) baby carrier options available today, I’m quite sure that the only thing that will suffer will be the Motrin sales they were hoping to attract from this highly active consumer group.
There’s an old saying in advertising: “The only focus group you can’t afford is the one you never had.”
As an addendum to my comment above, I’d like to commend Motrin for listening to the feedback and removing the ad from their site – and future advertising campaigns. I do believe that they thought they were commiserating with moms…unfortunately they alienated that very group. But kudos to them for reacting to the reaction. As the owner of a company (albeit a small one in comparison to McNeil Consumer Healthcare!), I know it’s not always easy to take criticism when you think you’re “doing the right thing”. It takes a big person/company to own up to their mistakes.