13
The Game Has Changed
Immediacy and Relevancy
ALONG WITH THE explosion of social media comes a change in power. One person calling your customer service line to complain may not have much impact in your mind, but throw in a handful of people with the same problem, an influential blog or two, and a Twitter army, and you have a good old-fashioned revolt on your hands.
Nothing defines this more than when Motrin decided to launch a new ad campaign around “Motrin Moms.” It was a little edgy, a bit shortsighted, and missed the mark. The ad was trying to say that carrying a baby in one of those side-saddle-shoulder harnesses was done because it looks trendy, but because it also hurts, you should take Motrin!
The company released the spot on its web site on a Friday in late 2008. I’m sure the company reps gave a round of high-fives to each other39 and off they went for the weekend. And then the baby-poo hit the fan. Moms who watched the commercial got offended40 and started to talk about it. On blogs, on Facebook, and on this up-and-coming micro-blogging site named Twitter. I did not want to be the guy who showed up at the office Monday morning to the 20,000 e-mails that were awaiting Motrin in response to its new campaign.
Here was a billion-dollar pharmaceutical company versus a bunch of moms. In the old days, big-pharma wins. Company reps send a few coupons in the mail to irate callers, and that’s the end of it. But now, everything is immediate and everyone’s voice is relevant. Social media is the great level playing field for all. Blogs and tweets rank very well in search engines, and word of mouth is as easy to start as a single tweet. Go ahead and search Google for the term “Motrin Moms.” See what comes up. The results are dominated by blog posts about how bad the commercial is, or a rundown of how badly it was handled by Motrin reps. The Motrin reps do not even own the top five ranking for the term!41
They pulled the commercial off the corporate site, but it was too late. YouTube has at least 10 copies of it more than a year later. Remember, the Internet never forgets. ☺
So what could Motrin execs have done to fix this, outside of never creating the commercial in the first place? Here are five suggestions.
1. Monitored social media channels for mentions of the advertisement or campaign. If people are talking about your brand, you should be a part of the conversation.
2. Reacted and posted in their blog, in place of the commercial, that they were attempting to have some fun and admitted to the error.
3. Run a contest to have others make a better commercial about Motrin Moms and given away prizes, such as those shoulder slings, and so forth.
4. Enabled voting on Facebook, via tweets, and on YouTube for the best commercial.
5. Presented the commercial as what they should have done in the first place because the people who know moms best are . . . moms.
We are a very forgiving culture if you own up to your mistakes. You can’t avoid mistakes nor can you control them after the fact, but you can own a mistake and make it better. When someone says “Any publicity is good publicity,” that’s true to a point. If you remedy the situation, it can turn out great for you, but if you don’t fix it, it just makes you look bad and I can’t see how that’s “good publicity” for anyone.
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.