In our book we describe various examples of how online communities of mothers have been able to change corporate behaviour, including forcing Woolworths to delist a range of bedroom furniture for young girls called Lolita and stopping Tesco from selling a pole-dancing kit within the toys and games section of their website.
In another great example of mum power, a bunch of Twitter-using moms in the US has this week forced J&J to pull a US ad (for pain killer Motrin), that gave the impression that using a baby-sling is a fashion accessory, and a painful one at that. The company’s agency thought they were empathising with the experiences of new mums. Unfortunately they managed to inadvertently upset a particular crowd of social networked moms, who used Twitter and YouTube to mobilise a mass protest.
Dan Leahul tells the full story (with all the links) in his Brand Republic blog. It is also worth checking out Neville Hobson’s blog - he draws some interesting parallels with the famous Kryptonite lock case.
J&J’s response to this demonstration of consumer empowerment was swift. The company published on online statement within hours claiming that: “We have heard you. We are parents ourselves and we take feedback from moms seriously.”
Another victory for consumer empowerment (the MotrinMums will provide a case study for marketing conferences for the next few years) … another demonstration of the rapid deployment of social media … & yet another example of how somebody is always likely to be offended by something.
Was J&J right to give in to the wishes of this particular crowd? Personally I think they over-reacted and set a dangerous precedent for the future. I am sure that the agency responsible for the ad had tested it with focus groups and would have been able to provide testimonies from mums who empathised with its lighthearted tone. This wasn’t a superficial ad seeking to generate publicity through shock tactics – like the recent commercial from Heinz featuring a gay kiss, but J&J clearly didn’t fancy taking on, or at least debating the issue with this particular crowd.
Giving in to the crowd sometimes feels like the easiest thing to do, but what does this decision say about all of the marketing experts within J&J and its agencies responsible for producing the ad in the first place? Maybe that crowd deserved as much support as the Twittering moms.