Motrin Moms

Motrin has stepped in a great big pile of Twitter Mom Wrath. And it is ugly. Someone at their agency is going to have a very bad day tomorrow.

• Check out this video on YouTube. The video was added today, and at this writing has had 2014 viewers. (How many has it had when you looked at it?) Note how the creator has used Twitter screen shots to communicate her points.

• Twitter moms are talking about why they will never use Motrin again.

• #motrinmoms is the number one trending topic on http://search.twitter.com. 

• If you search motrin + moms on google, you get five blogs hammering Motrin for being everything from insensitive to condescending, all penned today - Sunday. And on the right, hee, you get a paid ad. It's Motrin, telling Moms "we feel your pain!" Un.be.lievable. 

Here is the Motrin Advertisement online that has caused all the fuss. Take a look at it, if it's still up when you read this, and decide for yourself. Whoops! They DID take it down! Here it is on YouTube. 

Several pundits and critics have opined that the whole public relations fiasco could have been avoided if Motrin had done focus groups with Moms and asked them to react to the ads. Supposedly, they would have learned from these participants that many mothers would find the ads belittling and condescending.

Could focus groups have averted this nightmare for Motrin? Maybe.

I don't know whether focus groups were involved in any way in the creation of this advertising, but I have to say honestly that it does not appear so. There are too many aspects of the ad that to me would not have passed any credible disaster-check, too many phrases that would have made participants sit up and say, "wait a minute".That is, if...

• If the moderator had created a dynamic where participants felt comfortable expressing points of view that may have dissented from the majority opinion.

• If the participants had been asked to write down their reactions to the ads first before expressing them verbally.

• If the participants had understood that there were no right or wrong answers in the group, and that their opinions and reactions were valued especially if they disagreed with the way the rest of the group felt.

• If the participants had been allowed to divide the ad into the parts that resonated well, and the parts that did not.

• If the participants had gone through an emotion chart to show all of the feelings the ads gave them, and then asked to correlate the parts of the ad to the individual feelings. 

• If the moderator had been attuned to the body language of participants who were keeping quiet.

• If the participants had been made to understand that groups are not about agreement (especially important for women) but about understanding. 

• If the moderator had used perception analyzer.

• If the client used a moderator who was separate from the agency, and owed her allegiance to the client rather than to the Agency.

• If the client used an experienced moderator who was completely comfortable telling them that they better pitch this ad and come up with content that was not offensive to its target market.

Any of these could have prevented the problem, assuming the clients and agency behind the glass listened. Agencies hate focus groups - and the truth is that focus groups should NOT always be used to assess advertising creative. EVERYONE has an opinion on what makes good, effective advertising, and who is right?

But the reaction today of the Twitter Moms is a pretty strong argument that clients and agencies should spend more time talking with their customers and less time talking to their customers.

Sooner or later, maybe with the help of Twitter and a few other PR calamities such as this one, agencies and clients may begin to get it.

What do you think?

This just in - Motrin has taken down the page and will pull the ads. So they are listening now.

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Comments

[Beth Dunn]

This is a great analysis of what really goes into a focus group, when its done well. Thanks so much for going deeper on this aspect of the MotrinMoms episode.

Twitter watchers (including myself) often talk about using Twitter as a focus group but I dont think Twitter could ever really achieve the standards you mention here. There is too much tendency toward groupthink, and in a virtual environment, it might be impossible to properly set up all the conditions for effective moderating.

[db]

Nice breakdown Frank!

[Kara]

Super interesting Frank...another big miss on this issue are moms with disabilities that cause the sling to be the ONLY way to carry/hold their baby. That doesnt make us tired and crazy...thanks for the interesting perspective on marketing.

[Karen Swim]

Wow! I saw this in my twitterstream. As a marketer the last group Id want to irritate is moms! It was interesting to read the comments from non-moms who did not understand what the fuss was about. For me it further illuminated why we cannot make assumptions as marketers. Im not a mom and I too would have missed this issue which underscores the importance of knowing your market, theyre not all like you.

[Nedra]

This is a great case for pretesting and using an experienced moderator. Thanks!

[alison]

Youre obviously right - Motrin should have used a focus group to figure out how moms really feel before running an ad like this.

On the other hand . . . I dont really get what was so bad about the ad. (And I am a mom, and I do have a baby sling. And it DOES make my back hurt sometimes! And I DO look tired and crazy from time to time . . . Ill be the first to admit it!) I guess it could seem condescending somehow - but the ad sounded like Motrin was on the same team as moms, not making fun of them! Like We all know how it goes . . . having kids is tough mentally and physically. Using a baby sling is great for you and the baby, but lets face it. It may mean you need Motrin at some point.

Twitter lets things totally blow up more than they would have otherwise. Some moms were genuinely upset, but if there was no medium for them to all jump on the outraged bandwagon, many moms probably would have just let the ad slide. I guess my point is . . . now that there are media like Twitter where everyone can comment instantly and where groupthink (just being outraged because everyone else is, and its fun!) can so quickly take over - focus groups REALLY ARE vital to avoid this kind of disaster.

[Frank Martin]

@beth, thanks for reading and responding. I think there are many ways that Twitter or other microblogging or social media can supplement qualitative and quantitative research to help us make even more informed marketing decisions. No doubt, as you know, the game has changed significantly!

And thanks for reading @db (Dean Browell) Hope youre enjoying Richmond!

@kara - I had not even thought about that; excellent point.

@karen, no kidding. Moms have always held the power - but now its even more so. They can be a gracious source of info if you care enough to ask too, as I think Motrin knows now.

@nedra - thank you for saying that - so many times inexperienced moderators are asked to do something they just arent equipped to do, and here is an excellent example of what can happen when things go wrong.

And @allison, as someone who has collected opinions for his entire career, i know that some people can shrug off things that send others into apoplexy - and I think youre absolutely right that the whole thing was amplified by Twitter and the bandwagon effect. All the more reason to test and monitor! Thanks so much for reading and commenting!

[Beth Harte]

Frank, a great synopsis. I am not a mom and I still thought the ad was a tad off-putting...not connecting. After diving into this a bit more, its just a tough lesson in bad advertising. And a good lesson for why social media is viable. Brands like Motrin really need to start communicating with their customers whether through a focus group or other on-line tools. As a result of not doing so they are not only under the fire of moms who blog, but all other bloggers that are dissecting this situation. Its a great case study, but I really hope that Motrin learns from it and doesnt bury their head in the sand or become resentful of bloggers. Its a PR nightmare for now, but they did a great job of handling the mom wrath so far (i.e. pulling down the video).

[Elizabeth]

I completely disagree. I have worked on the Motrin account and have sat in enough qualitative research to know that a) babywearing is seen as the new thing moms are supposed to do (whether they want to do it or not) and b) it causes pain to women. I guarantee that in both qual and quant, it would be only a tiny group of women who would object. The ad accurately reflects mainstream mothers; it just doesn't reflect the small world of a small group of crunchy mothers who don't want to hear the potential negatives of babywearing because they want to spread the gospel.

This would be akin to a company marketing nipple creams to soothe the pain associated with breastfeeding - meets a real consumer need, but you'd hear from the small group of crunchy mothers who wouldn't want to have their pet cause portrayed with any negatives.

This isn't a fail on Motrin. This is a small, nonrepresentative group who got offended. Anyone who does qualitative with new mothers hears the pain of babywearing, again and again.

[Frank Martin]

Elizabeth, thanks for taking the time to comment. It's good to have the thoughts of someone who actually has the view from behind the scenes.

I'm obviously not a Mom, but there were a couple of objections raised that should have been a red flag - 1) wearing a baby as an accessory, and 2) the "whiny tone" of the voiceover. Both should have been caught in the post-creative disaster-check process, assuming there was one that was not moderated by an Agency employee or contractor.

As you no doubt know, humor is really tough to pull off - and Motrin clearly botched the attempt. And you're right, it probably was a "non-representative" group - vanguards of groundswells always are.

[Beth Harte]

@Frank and @Elizabeth, if it's not too late to comment here, I'd just like to say that I had changed my position (from what I had commented earlier) on this situation as time went on and I saw what was really happening.

I was disappointed that Motrin gave in and took down the campaign instead of engaging in a conversation first. Most major consumer brands don't move forward with a campaign without strong research to back it up.

I think this was a case of a perfect storm (the end of a International Babywearing Week, a mom who took offense and went to the local press, and a Twitter outcry). AdAge pointed out that only 0.15% of global Internet users are on Twitter...so that makes the moms a very tiny population compared to the "not-so-much" online population of moms. That said, I respect J&J/Motrin for doing what they felt they needed to do. I just really hope that more traditional campaigns aren't subjected to this type of situation and if they are, I hope they open up a conversation before pulling anything.

Thanks!
Beth