Social Media Moms Influence Motrin To Pull Campaign
This Sunday the social media "mom" community impacted the marketing direction of a Fortune 500 company. What began with a tweet ended in McNeil Consumer Health, a divison of Johnson & Johnson, putting the brakes on a multiple channel strategy. Motrin: We Feel Your Pain was a campagin that targeted baby sling wearing moms. While I am sure that the brand team at Motrin meant no disrespect, the moms (and a few dads) found the "wearing your baby video" passionately disturbing. Within hours there were thousands of tweets flying in cyberspace and blog posts offering expanded commentary. But as usually happens, the buzz did not stay online but moved offline courtesy of the social media community.
"I know this thing has been viral but I have been using the phone to "tell a friend" and they are out raged too." - @cutiebootycakes
"I emailed MSNBC and the New Orleans local channels and newspapers." @KatjaPresnal. Katja also created her own video which went viral in a flash.
The influence of "just" a few thousand people resulted in the Mortin.com website being taken down and plans made to pull print ads from distribution. Note: the video, of course, found its way to YouTube. However, those tweets and blogs and the subsequent actions taken from McNeil Consumer Health may have saved the company some hefty dollars in terms of the ultimate goodwill and stopped the ooze of brand erosion before it could spread further online and off.
An ironic twist of the story is the Johnson & Johnson spent months and months researching social media including talking to bloggers before it launched its JNJBTW blog (I was invited to a sponsored dinner for the purpose of helpling J&J understand social media.) and bought the mummy community Baby Center. In the too frequently silo-ed world of business learnings are often not shared. Big mistake this time.
McNeil Consumer Healthcare has been changed by the influence of the bigger conversation. The lesson learned is that Not stepping into social media especially when a significant, vocal, powerful segment of your market .. IS stepping into social media. What that ultimately looks like for McNeil Consumer Health remains to be seen. If they take their lead from Dell it could be something spectacular.
What should be the next steps that Morin marketing brand team takes next?
Toby Bloomberg is the president of Atlanta-based Bloomberg Marketing and also writes for her blog, Diva Marketing. A national speaker and facilitator of social media marketing and traditional marketing topics for organizations like the American Marketing Association, the Olympic Organizing Committee and SCORE, Toby has over 15 years experience. In addition to co-hosting the Mplanet blog, Toby will be speaking at Mplanet's Digital Marketing Lab in January 2009.
Posted by Toby Bloomberg on November 17, 2008 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
