The Motrin Video Disaster: Learning about PR2.0 the hard way

As any good marketing strategist would tell you understanding your consumer is critical to getting the right messages and conversations with your target audience.

Unfortunately, US J&J/McNeil Consumer Healthcare rolled out an online video on the brand website for Motrin.com, which during only one day , infuriated thousands of people. The video talked about pain relief for mothers carrying their babies in slings or babypacks referring to it as ‘fashionable’ – the tone itself was highly condescending. Although the offending video was pulled from Motrin.com, someone else uploaded it to YouTube for all to see. View the video for yourself below:

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Today getting the message wrong has never been more brand-destroying. The reason: the blogosphere moves extremely fast and can be extremely damaging to a brand. For example, negative comments regarding the video were picked up by mum bloggers in the US who then spread the negative word throughout Twitter (view video capturing tweets). This naturally caused a large backlash towards both Motrin and J&J/McNeil.

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To their credit McNeil Consumer HealthCare did try to engage with bloggers after the fact, but the damage was already done.

Key Lessons:

1. Listen to the Consumer: The phama company could have engaged key mum bloggers (influentials) early in the campaign development via market research company to gain feedback from this audience. An ideal way to reach and listen to that segment would be via an online community – an interactive space set up where particpants converse about key topics.

2. Engage in the Blogosphere – ensure that you are tuned into blogs, Twitterers and forums that your clients are likely to participate in - this will give you better understand your segment, and create constructive channels for feedback on new products, services or campaigns

Thanks to Jenni Beattie, Director of Digital Consulting at The Digital Edge for this post.

Tracking the media, monitoring the message