Social Media Spin

No Social Media Mon­i­tor­ing Strat­egy Helped Kill Motrin Moms Ad

Think about that for a minute. A tar­geted adver­tise­ment by one of the most respected phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies in the world was brought down in less than 48 hours by a rel­a­tively small num­ber of social net­work users. What’s more, these social net­work users were on Twit­ter — one of the social net­works many com­pa­nies find most chal­leng­ing to use because of its for­mat of 140 char­ac­ter mes­sages, and a cul­ture of inter­ac­tion — not broadcast.

Motrin used tra­di­tional media to dis­trib­ute the adver­tise­ment — they weren’t using social media specif­i­cally for dis­tri­b­u­tion of this ad. It was on the Motrin.com web­site and YouTube, but it was also dis­trubuted via tra­di­tional and print media — “Safe media”. Not using social media for the main ad push likely made Motrin adver­tis­ers con­sider putting resources else­where, and not in a social media mon­i­tor­ing strat­egy. Yet, by not hav­ing a solid social mon­i­tor­ing strat­egy in place, the out­rage of Twit­ter­ers to the ad swelled so quickly that Motrin didn’t notice until it was too late, and ulti­mately lost com­plete con­trol of the entire campaign.

Some con­se­quences of no Social Mon­i­tor­ing Strategy

The adver­tise­ment was a bust — it had to com­pletely stopped. The finan­cial impli­ca­tions of their mis­step are likely painful. Here’s a shot of the graphic on the Motrin.com homepage.

Motrin apol­ogy

Motrin did the right thing in acknowl­edg­ing it’s mis­take of offend­ing baby-​​carrying Moms, and then remov­ing the ads. Their sin­cere tone and thanks for pub­lic feed­back will likely help this débâ­cle become a thing of the past soon.

But your com­pany is likely not as well funded as Motrin. What les­son should you take away from Motrin’s very pub­lic social media mis­step?

Don’t ignore Social Media: Even if you never pro­mote your com­pany via social media net­works, don’t ignore it. Hire a Social Media Mar­ket­ing Con­sul­tant or agency today to help you develop a rela­tion­ship and mon­i­tor­ing strat­egy. Skip­ping this step can devalue your brand, and cost your com­pany mil­lions of dol­lars and customers.

Check out some of the brands who got punk’d by social media (via Forrester’s Jeremy Owyang).

UPDATE:
For those of you who haven’t seen the ad yet, the Motrin Moms ad is still avail­able here.