I am sure everyone and their mother has heard about the Motrin drama. Motrin launched an online ad campaign targeting “babywearing” moms that was supposed to empathize with the pain associated with carrying your baby in a sling.

The reaction was less than positive. Moms were mad, real mad. Tweets, blogs, and youtube videos were popping up like crazy about the offense taken from the ad.

For those of you who thought that ad was pulled quickly enough that a spoof couldn’t be made, I am about to put your minds at ease. This is our favorite response video

Obviously, J&J should have tested the ad before the launch. That was their big mistake. Although they are still getting a ton of negative fallout from it they handled the reaction well. They immediately apologized and pulled the ad; it was launched on Friday and by Monday, the ad had been pulled. The buzz about the ad continued throughout the week and mostly fizzled by Friday.

The Motrin story is becoming an instant case study for how influential social media is on brands today. It also proves that there are huge opportunities to use social media to improve your brand image.

Even though there was negative buzz about Motrin, the good thing is that the fact that people were tweeting and blogging about it proves that there is some level of passion for the brand. Now Motrin’s challenge is to take that passion and make it positive.

So you might ask “what would buzz.io have done differently?” Well as you have heard us preach so many times from this pulpit it is about the conversations with your customers.  Don’t wait until a crisis to start talking.  Have you seen Motrin contact the offended mothers and apologize? they probably lost some moms forever because of this but by having a conversation they might have turned some anger into excitement because they are a brand that cares.

It isn’t too late for your brand – get out to the conversations and start talking!

TV – There you are totally engaged in your favorite show and then suddenly the screen fades to black and you are attacked with a poorly executed advertisement for soap or something you don’t care about.  It is 3 times as loud as it should be to make sure you can’t do anything else.

Radio – You are bored in your car and you happen upon a radio station that is letting you anonymously indulge your guilty pleasure for Kenny Logins.  Instead of going from “Highway Through the Danger Zone” to “Footloose” you end up with a commercial for used cars

Magazines – You can’t even enjoy what you are reading because they have inserted so many ads and stiff pieces of paper that fall into your lap.  They also put part of the story on 20 different pages like some lousy choose your own adventure book.  (I would always read those straight through and then imagine what I would have chosen)

How do you react? Mute, fast forward, change the station, put the magazine down or go get a soda.

What you wanted was great content, what you got was OK content with lots of interruptions

Does advertising work? Well kind of…not as well as a referral from a friend or a relationship.  But it is true if you interrupt me enough you may catch me humming your Jingle – but that doesn’t mean I like your product, or that I am even a potential customer.