How#MotrinMom Brought Down J&J
If you are an avid Twitter user, you might have been able to notice the power of social media and the perhaps terrifying way this new phenomenon can impact businesses large and small. This past weekend when #Motrinmoms surpassed “Obama” as the most searched for term on Twitter , it forced J&J’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare into a company in dire need of a social media crisis plan!
But, I contend, Twitter was only part of the story!
From Ad Age:
Two days after a new ad push for Motrin triggered an online backlash, J&J’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit is pulling the campaign, from the New York office of independent shop Taxi, and begging a vocal mommy-blogging nation for forgiveness.
Though the ad had been out for a month, it finally caught the attention of our own prominent Green Options blogger, Jessica Gottlieb who started Twittering about it and published this piece More Outrage as #MotrinMoms Reaches #2 On Twitter on Eco Child’s Play, as well as this one on her own blog, the news spread like wildfire and resulted in the ad being pulled from the website and replaced with an apology.
I had a bit of an inside view of this phenomenon, as Jessica and I both write for Our sister site, Eco Childs Play and Silicon Valley Moms and I follow her on Twitter. So, as a social media marketer, it was interesting to me to watch this whole grass roots campaign develop over the weekend.
