The Ad:

Last week Motrin (Motrin.com was down most of Nov. 16th) created an ad , to correlate with International Baby Wearing Week, it was probably their intent to appeal to moms across North America. Instead, they pissed off their target market with this flare of creative genius:

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The Response:

The narrator in the ad has a slightly sarcastic tone of voice which could be perceived as condescending. The ad copy seems to pity or even mock mothers of infants, rather than empathize with them or respect them for their love and dedication. Of course, it’s probably true that baby wearing can cause pain in certain circumstances, but Motrin failed to inspire confidence or trust in their brand and instead came off as presumptuous, condescending and aloof.

The response has been pretty clear and wide-ranging. There are thousands of messages on Twitter under the tags MotrinMoms and MotrinGate, hundreds of blog posts, and hilarious video responses like the one below.

Right: A short article in the Vancouver Sun about the ad (click the image to view the article).

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The Lesson:

The ad wasn’t completely evil. It wasn’t outright bigoted, prejudiced, etc. but understandably it was seen as disrespectful and offensive. I think because we live in a society that is constantly becoming more connected, and messages can travel faster than ever, the impact of an ad campaign can be seen in just hours after its launch; and in the case of this one, Motrin has instigated a tsunami of negative publicity against itself. There are those that say “any publicity is good publicity” and with thousands of people on blogs, Twitter and YouTube responding negatively to the ad, it does create brand recognition. However, this type of brand recognition can be permanently damaging. It’s really interesting and inspiring to see that new forms of communication have given the collective masses so much more power to have their voices heard and to influence corporations, governments and leaders. I think this collective power will continue to grow and change the way advertising, communication and marketing is done.

Now… if Moms can collectively shut down the Motrin website in a day, how about working on the world financial crisis? Should be doable in a few weeks? :)

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