The
Motrin Moms crisis sparked by a controversial Motrin ad on their website has
provided some interesting lessons on how companies must learn to adapt. In
short, Motrin ran an ad that summarized said, “Take Motrin if you wear your
baby in a sling or carrier.”
(Disclaimer:
I don’t support the ad or Motrin’s position, nor am I opposed to it, I’m merely
commenting on the influence and power of social media. My wife is not offended
either and both of us have carried our daughters in slings).
A number
of mothers were highly offended and started a firestorm on Twitter
and on the blogosphere. The protest erupted and began to garner media coverage.
Motrin eventually pulled the ad – then they took down the entire website! In
summary, a bunch of very vocal mothers on Twitter and blogs forced Motrin to
its knees within 3 days. Motrin apologized:
So…it’s
been almost 4 days since I apologized here for our Motrin advertising. What an
unbelievable 4 days it’s been. Believe me when I say we’ve been taking our own
headache medicine here lately!
Btw - if
you’re confused by this - we removed our Motrin ad campaign from the
marketplace on Sunday because we realized through your feedback that we had
missed the mark and insulted many moms. We didn’t mean to…but we did. We've
been able to get most of the ads out of circulation, but those in magazines
will, unfortunately, be out there for a while.
We are
listening to you, and we know that's the best place to start as we move ahead.
More to come on that.
In the
end, we have been reminded of age-old lessons that are tried and true:
When
you make a mistake - own up to it, and say you’re sorry.
Learn
from that mistake.
That’s
all... for now.
Sincerely,
Kathy Widmer
VP Marketing
McNeil Consumer Healthcare
I
personally think that the whole case is overblown – which the Web can easily do
– but there was damage, and Motrin has had to face the music. Motrin apologized,
which is sufficient for me, but not enough for others.
Josh
Bernoff, co-writer of Groundswell, offers the following advice (see The
groundswell gives Motrin a headache):
- You need a community about
your brand -- private or public -- so you can test how these things will
play. This is essential market research.
- You need a Twitter account
and/or a blog to be able to respond quickly when these things happen. They
do happen. They could and will happen to you. (They have certainly
happened to me, and it's a good thing I had a place to respond.) Otherwise
you have no voice.
- Viral has two sides. Never
forget that.
- Immunize your marketing and
brand staff by educating them. Show them what happened here, and ask them,
"Does this scare you? Do you see the power of this stuff?" Then
invest $20 and buy them a copy of Groundswell
or Secrets of Social Media Marketing to
help them get a clue, and use this incident to get them started.
David
Armano at Logic & Emotion also offers additional advice:
- Design Your Website For Rapid
Response - If your site has to be taken down in order to respond to a
crisis, re-design it so that it can be updated quickly and easily without
having to throw your organization and agencies into a panic. Worry about
your response strategy, not the design of your site.
- Think Like A Blogger,
Tweeter, Community & Citizen Journalist - Look at how quickly the
mommy community organized and produced an authentic video. It's because
they don't have legal guidelines holding them back. You probably do—but of
you can figure a way around them, you can fight authenticity with
authenticity, which looks less like a fight and more like a conversation
anyway.
- Have A Google Strategy In
Place - Aside from perhaps smoothing things over with the offended, the
real incentive for any organization to engage in situations like this is
to influence the search results and digital trail so that your
organization presents well on them. The best way to do this is to have
people saying good things about you which means you have to give them
something good to say and can't force it. The end goal needs to be helping
people. The ROI will be a much more positive long tail.
My
advice: when marketing a product or service, its best to stay away from
religion, and babies. And really, why the hell don’t you have a Twitter account
yet?
Now does anyone think the Dr. Pepper campaign regarding Guns N’ Roses and their new album was a smart move? I think it was brilliant… up until their site crashed and people couldn’t redeem their coupons…
