Mad Mommies Give Motrin A Headache

For anyone who hasn’t been convinced that online marketing and social networks are important to offline businesses, we now have indisputable proof. Last week, there was literally an online explosion in response to a recent ad from Motrin. Here's the ad in case you missed it.

The ad for Motrin pain reliever was an attempt to reach out to moms by painting the picture of a selfless baby-wearing mother who is willing to suffer through back pain in order to better bond with her child. The idea is that Motrin looks after the mom while the mom looks after her baby.

Unfortunately for some, the ad’s tone and particular choice of words came off as offensive and although it had been in circulation since Sept 30, 2008, it caught the attention of some influential bloggers last week who did not appreciate the message Motrin was sending. They began blogging and tweeting (even making a video response) causing the offending ad to spread like wild fire across the Internet - from one tweeter to another, one blog to next. It wasn’t long before thousands were weighing in on the debacle and wondering what they could do. And it didn’t just stop at personal mom blogs. The story made headlines at Forbes, the New York Times and even social media sites like Digg.

Moms, Dads, even men and women who had no children began banding together, rallying for a boycott and sending emails to Motrin to let them know just how they felt about the ad. Their biggest beefs were the narrator’s snarky tone and how the ad seemed to degrade the idea of baby wearing by saying “Supposedly it’s a real bonding experience” and “It totally makes me look like an official mom”. Baby-wearing moms felt the ad made it sound as though there is no real evidence baby-wearing is beneficial and most do it because it’s fashionable. It mocked something mom's felt was important and ended up angering the very audience it was designed to target.

In just 24 hours, Motrin issued an official apology and pulled the ad from their website. Clearly, the backlash was felt and mommy bloggers’ voices were heard.

Of course, there were many people who didn’t understand what the fuss was about and chalked up the corporate mistake to just that, a mistake. The numbers aren’t in yet to determine if this marketing blunder has had any effect on sales, but one thing is for sure: Motrin will be paying a little more attention to their mommy audience and making sure to create advertising that is sensitive to their needs and beliefs.

But this isn’t the only lesson to be learned. The most disturbing part of the whole fiasco is that Motrin’s ad department had no idea about twitter or the online uproar until they were called directly. This goes to show that companies still aren’t realizing the importance of having an online social media presence. Although Motrin acted quickly (once aware of the problem), the situation could have been cooled a lot faster if Motrin paid more attention to their brand online.

When it comes to consumers, word of mouth is one of the most influential factors in deciding what to buy and that ‘word’ now comes in the form of social networking sites, media sites, and blogs. To think, if no one called Motrin directly to tell them about the ad’s negative impact they may have never known the bad reputation that was spreading and the consequences could have been much worse. Hopefully this is a lesson learned for everyone on how powerful the Internet can be.

UPDATE : As reported by Compete, Motrin.com had a 10x increase in their daily traffic as a result of the ad's coverage.