Motrin – A Case Study on the Power of Social Media

You really should watch this Motrin ad before reading the post, but here’s a brief synopsis if you choose not to.

The ad targets moms, especially moms who use baby carriers to hold their young ones. It mentions that all different types of baby carriers seem to be in style now, and although they’re supposed to be good for the baby, they’re hard on mom’s back, neck and shoulders. In the end, the mom in the ad says that the pain is alright, because “it’s a good kind of pain – it’s for my kid.” Plus, she states “it totally makes me feel like an official mom.”

Motrin launched the ad above at the end of September, but a little over a week ago (on Nov. 15th) the ad was picked up by some bloggers and all hell broke loose. The very next day (Nov. 16th) Motrin yanked the ad and responded with an apology on their website. (see this timeline for the details of how the story broke)

The comments about the story ranged from support and understanding of Motrin’s goals to anger and frustration at the tone of the ad. Some felt Motrin connected with them about a deeply personal issue – their infants. Others were insensed that Motrin would insinuate that baby carriers were simply a style statement. Others commented that if you properly wear a baby carrier, it won’t hurt your back, neck or shoulders. Here are some examples of comments that surfaced on Twitter on the 16th. Pay attention to the last comment, it sums up how social media can be used to your benefit:

Just think about that last comment for a minute. There were thousands of people contributing comments about one ad campaign. Think about the possibilities if you could harness the knowledge and opinions of that vocal minority. Social media allows you to do just that. While this campaign turned out to be a bit of a PR mess for Motrin, they’ve been able to identify thousands of people who they could use as they begin working on a new campaign. They can leverage this groundswell of consumers to float slogans or ad concepts by and get feedback BEFORE causing another Motrin-gate ’scandal’.

If this isn’t an excellent example of the power of social media, I don’t know what is. While this campaign ended up with enough negative press to doom the campaign, Motrin learned an important lesson. People ARE talking about you and your products. You just have to listen in and react accordingly.

That being said, there are many who are questioning Motrin’s hasty decision to pull the plug on this campaign (see this great article at AdAge). While it received quite a buzz in the Twitter community, aside from a small handful of articles in USA Today, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune the ad went largely unnoticed by the general public. Whether Motrin made the right decision to kill the ad when they did, that decision was made based upon the reaction of those in the social media sphere.

So, what should you take from this case study? Know that people are talking about you and your destination. While you can’t know everything that everyone is saying, take a couple minutes to set up some Google Alerts (see the Tourism Tech Corner Google Alerts post for a tutorial on them) for your company name and other keywords associated with your business. This will keep you in the loop about what people are saying to you. Once you know what people are saying, respond!

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