- Sarah Palin's media coach is for the birds...
- Ironically, Motrin's Advertising Causes Pain
- Sure to be an entertaining conference: MIT's Futures of Entertainment 3
- What Obama means for employers
- Anytime Fitness gets a mention in blog about doing things at all hours
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The Lead
| November 2008
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« October 2008 | Main | December 2008 » Sarah Palin's media coach is for the birds...Posted by Matt Kucharski on November 21, 2008 at 3:08 PMWhen conducting a media interview with a television outlet, rule number one is to pay attention to your background! Sigh... Ironically, Motrin's Advertising Causes PainPosted by Jason Swartz on November 18, 2008 at 11:31 AMThis past weekened, Motrin IB, the little orange pills some of us need on the occasional Saturday morning, made the decision to issue an apology and take down their advertising due to outcry in the social media sphere. The ad, aimed at moms, talks about how carrying your baby via sling has become somewhat of a fashion statement. Along with carrying your baby comes back pain...then Motrin comes in and saves the day...you know the rest.
Apparently, the ad caused more pain than their product supposedly relieves. Influential mommy-bloggers found the ad offensive and expressed their frustration on Twitter, which then caused a storm of more negative consumer buzz. It's also interesting to note that when you Google "Motrin," the first link that appears is not the company's Web site, but rather a related article from the Chicago Tribune. This negative buzz has indirectly forced Johnson and Johnson, the makers of Motrin, to remove the advertising from all media. They also issued an apology to each of the influential bloggers, as well as this public apology on their Web site. This seems to be a classic example of what happens when marketers start talking at their consumers instead of with them. Often, we as marketers are guilty of thinking we know our audience, based on generic demographic information provided to us by some research company. However, in the age of social media, generic target market info with a broad focus is not enough. What Motrin could have done was test the ad among some of the influential mommy-bloggers, as well as several focus groups comprised of mainstream moms, to gain better insight. Likely, Motrin's focus groups consisted of moms within their own advertising agency, who weren't going to say the ad was offensive because they were the ones who created it. To be honest, I didn't find the ad all that offensive. Boring and fairly uncreative, yes. But again, I'm not the target audience. I think they did the right thing by issuing an apology and removing the ad. This gave their customers a chance to feel their pain. Afterall, sharing is what social media is all about. At the end of the day, none of us are perfect. But as marketers in today's social-media-dominated landscape, we have the responsibility of truly knowing the people we expect to buy our products.
Sure to be an entertaining conference: MIT's Futures of Entertainment 3Posted by Bob Brin on November 12, 2008 at 11:31 AM The Blair Witch Project . . . meets As the World Turns . . . meets Academia. This event is sponsored by the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium, and brings together media industries professionals and media studies academics to discuss the current state and ongoing trends in media. Includes panels on how value is counted in the media industries, understanding audiences, social media, the comic book industry, franchising and transmedia, media distribution in a global marketplace, and the intersection of academia and the media industries. Check it out. Happens Nov. 21 and 22, on MIT's campus.
What Obama means for employersPosted by Matt Kucharski on November 10, 2008 at 11:15 AMPretty interesting newsletter article from the HR Policy Association regarding what's likely going to happen in employment regulations in an Obama administration and heavily Democratic Senate. Regardless of whether you think the new administration will be good for business or not, it's a good time to take a look at your employee communications strategy to see if you're prepared... Anytime Fitness gets a mention in blog about doing things at all hoursPosted by Bob Brin on November 7, 2008 at 10:49 AMOur client Anytime Fitness got a nice mention today in the AOL WalletPop blog in the article "There's nothing you can't do at 3 a.m." that posted today. The AOL news site is written in a hip and trendy style and receives over 105,000 unique visitors per day. It's a good example of tying in to the topic of the day -- people finding ways to make the most of a busy work day/night while tightening the belt and the waist line all at the same time.
Google Alert: Now in RSS FormatPosted by Jason Swartz on November 4, 2008 at 3:37 PMFor those of you who use Google Alerts, they've finally incorporated a feed option to keep your email inbox from getting bombarded everyday. Here's the link of you'd like to set it up... Click here to check it out! |
