Let’s call it the rise of Mommy 2.0. The makers of Motrin may have riled a sleeping viral giant with it’s new ad campaign and Web 2.0 is abuzz.
Blog after blog, and post after post, slamming a new Motrin video and the giant Pharma company MacNeil for the slight, involving Moms who wear their kids in slings or “schwings.”
The furor pushed the Motrin website into instantly crazy numbers of visitors. The ad was ripped off the site and re-posted on Youtube (with hundreds of angry, baby wearing moms making their own video responses.
And Tuesday, it hit the APEX of PR crises by making the mainstream media…the Big 3 networks (are they all big anymore)ran the “Motrin Mom” story.
Motrin pulled the ad off the front page and said,“sorry.”
In the new media landscape, Fortune 500 companies are still trying to figure out social media…and the parent company MacNeil Consumer Healthcare (a Johnson&Johnson subsidiary)has just received one painful lesson: you don’t really need to pay big money for a focus group of mainly unconnected,unaffiliated and uninformed. All you have to do is float your ideas to the “Twitterati.”
Ask them BEFORE you go sideways with a screwy ad campaign or marketing idea. Use twitter to test market ideas, or get burned by the collective fire.
Evan Fraser
Moms Rule Twitter, So You Need Them on Board Before You Launch a Product
As a side:
Ad Age had an interview with head of e-marketing at Proctor&Gamble. Interesting read in the sense that even a smart, highly paid marketing guy at the nations largest advertiser doesn’t get social media. Read it here http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=132606