"Motrin Moms" Virus Video
Every so often, we as a global internet community are blessed with an amazing flaming debacle of a failure of a campaign. A company takes its ad people, sit around together, circled around a singular concept, and begin drinking pitchers and pitchers of their own branded conceptual Kool-Aid and they don't stop 'til it comes to life. Occasionally, someone stops drinking, speaks up, and the concept dies a deserved death and the company is spared potential humiliation. Today, Motrin was not so lucky.
If you haven't already seen the ad, spend 43 seconds and catch up:
They're obviously trying to be a little "edgy". And I'll be honest: of all badvertisments, this one is not that bad. But it's not my singular, off-target opinion that matters. It's the hundreds of thousands of moms that they've targeted with a supposedly humorous message about what a pain carrying their newborn babies can be. Their selfish, selfish babies.
Well, that community has spoken, and rather quickly. Motrin has since pulled the campaign from it's site (after having been down for half the day today), posted an apology, and the web continues to stay lit up; blog posts abound, and a Twitter storm to boot. (It's been moving so fast, there's already a backlash to the backlash.)
Hubbub aside, here are two key learnings for brands, to avoid this kind of disaster in their future digital marketing:
1. Motrin was clearly not being authentic.
I'm sure multiple people involved on the campaign - both from Motrin and Taxi NY (the creative agency behind the marketing) - are mothers. And I'm 98% sure they all love their kids very much. But they made the assumption that if they created a profile type - hip n' snarky mom - and tried to rally their consumer base around this one tiny, private truth (I mean, really; carrying kids probably does cause some aches and pains), that the people would follow. So again, while the ad may speak some truth, Motrin is not authentically representing the greater population, and thus, the population revolted.
2. Online, there is such a thing as bad viral.
Take a look at this pitch-perfect flowchart for assessing whether your video is "viral" or not. (Because you can't make a viral video; videos go viral, or they don't.) What it doesn't take into consideration however is whether your now-viral video is being perceived positively or negatively by the masses. The ratio of good viral videos to bad viral videos on the internet is pretty lopsided, in a good way. But ultimately, and before the age of the internets, the word 'viral' had carried a negative connotation - as in, viruses - which is being resurrected by the Motrin ads, and other negative marketing attempts like it.
The positive takeaway from this whole mess is the reminder to brands and content creators that content is still king. Muck up your creative online and it'll spread like wildfire ...but with terrible wildfire-like consequences.
If you haven't already seen the ad, spend 43 seconds and catch up:
They're obviously trying to be a little "edgy". And I'll be honest: of all badvertisments, this one is not that bad. But it's not my singular, off-target opinion that matters. It's the hundreds of thousands of moms that they've targeted with a supposedly humorous message about what a pain carrying their newborn babies can be. Their selfish, selfish babies.
Well, that community has spoken, and rather quickly. Motrin has since pulled the campaign from it's site (after having been down for half the day today), posted an apology, and the web continues to stay lit up; blog posts abound, and a Twitter storm to boot. (It's been moving so fast, there's already a backlash to the backlash.)
Hubbub aside, here are two key learnings for brands, to avoid this kind of disaster in their future digital marketing:
1. Motrin was clearly not being authentic.
I'm sure multiple people involved on the campaign - both from Motrin and Taxi NY (the creative agency behind the marketing) - are mothers. And I'm 98% sure they all love their kids very much. But they made the assumption that if they created a profile type - hip n' snarky mom - and tried to rally their consumer base around this one tiny, private truth (I mean, really; carrying kids probably does cause some aches and pains), that the people would follow. So again, while the ad may speak some truth, Motrin is not authentically representing the greater population, and thus, the population revolted.
2. Online, there is such a thing as bad viral.
Take a look at this pitch-perfect flowchart for assessing whether your video is "viral" or not. (Because you can't make a viral video; videos go viral, or they don't.) What it doesn't take into consideration however is whether your now-viral video is being perceived positively or negatively by the masses. The ratio of good viral videos to bad viral videos on the internet is pretty lopsided, in a good way. But ultimately, and before the age of the internets, the word 'viral' had carried a negative connotation - as in, viruses - which is being resurrected by the Motrin ads, and other negative marketing attempts like it.
The positive takeaway from this whole mess is the reminder to brands and content creators that content is still king. Muck up your creative online and it'll spread like wildfire ...but with terrible wildfire-like consequences.
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