Motrin apologies

An update:

Following a social media outcry, McNeil Healthcare (the parent company) have issued an apology on the homepage of their website http://www.motrin.com/




As well as this, they have also issued apologies via email to concerned customers and pledged to remove all occurences of the offending advert as quickly as possible.

This apology seems to have been relatively well received:
http://www.ladybuglandings.com/2008/11/motrin-heard-the-news/

I'm sure there will be several commentators out there who will provide their opinion on this series of events, but here's my main bullet points:

• Following the backlash, McNeil Healthcare, and in particular its VP if Marketing, seem to have responded over the weekend and today (I guess time will tell how badly this has affected brand and revenues)
• Several Motrin names on Twitter have now been taken by 'concerned' individuals (I'll not post who they are, as I don't think they have acted entirely in the public's best interest)
• Brands can no longer afford to ignore social media and should take steps to monitor the mentions and sentiment all the time

Further reading:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9120519
and
http://www.myfoxny.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=7880169&version=5&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.3.1

A social media crisis for Motrin

Word has reached these shores of a Social Media backlash to the TV adverts for Motrin a painkiller in the US.

The ad targetted mums who carry their child in a sling on their body and went on to mention how this this is fashionable and gives you back pain. They haven't gone as far as to say "your child is a pain in the neck", but a lot of people took offence to the clip, blogging about it:
(e.g. http://shakethesalt.com/2008/11/motrin-the-anti-mom/ ) and using Twitter. (At this time of writing, the http://www.motrin.com/ website is even down).

Judge for yourself :



This is a warning to every brand. Your customers could take offence, even at your highly-researched campaign, especially if it targets a sensitive section of the population (e.g. new mums). Make sure you have plans in place for how to deal with this sort of crisis and learn from how other companies respond.
(Note to Motrin: Perhaps taking down your own website at a point like this isn't the best policy?)