Space Ninja

Motrin Messes with Mommy-Bloggers and Loses

2008-11-21T22:57:04Z

This morning, Annie told me about a Motrin ad that a bunch of mom-bloggers were angry about because it was critical of babywearing. She was really upset about it, and convinced that it was an intentional slam on mothers. Since I work in marketing, and Annie majored in Sociology, we tend to have conversations like this where Annie says advertising is evil, and I try to defend it.

In this case, I told her that I doubted it was anything intentional, and that it was probably a case of design-by-committee. Still, I asked her to send me the link so I could check the video out, and figured it would be a good conversation starter at work. Once I watched the video, though, I was startled by how bad it was. I could easily see why people were offended, and as I dug around online to find the details, what emerged was a fascinating story about a big company whose attempt to brand with their target audience backfired badly, and forced them to cancel an entire ad campaign.

To make a long story short (check out this Advertising Age article for all the gory details), the video was posted on Motrin’s website a few weeks ago. Last weekend, at the end of International Babywearing Week, an incredible combination of outraged blog posts, Twitter users, and YouTube replies led to the entire site being pulled offline on Sunday. It was put back up on Monday with an apology.

Here’s the ad itself, and a transcript in case it goes offline. I encourage you to watch it, because the tone of the message is what sparked this whole thing.

“Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion. I mean, in theory it’s a great idea. There’s the front baby carrier, sling, schwing, wrap, pouch. And who knows what else they’ve come up with. Wear your baby on your side, your front, go hands free. Supposedly, it’s a real bonding experience. They say that babies carried close to the bod tend to cry less than others. But what about me? Do moms that wear their babies cry more than those who don’t? I sure do! These things put a ton of strain on your back, your neck, your shoulders. Did I mention your back?! I mean, I’ll put up with the pain because it’s a good kind of pain; it’s for my kid. Plus, it totally makes me look like an official mom. And so if I look tired and crazy, people will understand why.”

I think this ad fails on two fronts. First, they were clearly going for a tongue-in-cheek self-deprecating tone of voice, but mainly due to the voiceover actress they chose, that sarcasm is almost entirely lost in the reading. Secondly, rather than targeting mothers in general, they targeted attachment-parenting mothers — a group that tends to already feel outside the mainstream and subject to ridicule. The combination of these two factors resulted in an ad that was actually offensive, rather than funny — at least in the minds of the target audience.

Beth Dunn has a nice summary of why so many moms were offended:

Most of the uproar seems to be at the condescending tone and content of the ad, mainly the idea that:

Moms wear babies in slings as a fashion statement, or to be trendy

Wearing babies in slings is a new thing

Moms are crazy

Although the ad doesn’t come right out and say it, I think another underlying message is that moms secretly resent having to carry kids. The implication that caring for her kids causes a mom so much pain that she needs a pill to solve it makes mothering itself seem like a disease that requires treating.

In response to the sudden and overwhelming flood of negative feedback, Motrin’s marketing department reacted pretty quickly. Since events came to a head over the weekend, they quickly pulled the entire site offline while they figured out their response. By Monday, they had put the site back online with an apology on the front page:

“With regard to the recent Motrin advertisement, we have heard you.

On behalf of McNeil Consumer Healthcare and all of us who work on the Motrin Brand, please accept our sincere apology.

We have heard your complaints about the ad that was featured on our website. We are parents ourselves and take feedback from moms very seriously.

We are in the process of removing this ad from all media. It will, unfortunately, take a bit of time to remove it from our magazine advertising, as it is on newsstands and in distribution.

Thank you for your feedback. Its very important to us.”

Sincerely,
Kathy Widmer
Vice President of Marketing
McNeil Consumer Healthcare

Even better, they sent a personal email to every blog they could find that had posted about the issue. Seriously, almost every blog post I found on the issue had an addendum saying “I just got this email from Motrin:”

I am the Vice President of Marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare. I have responsibility for the Motrin Brand, and am responding to concerns about recent advertising on our website. I am, myself, a mom of 3 daughters.

We certainly did not mean to offend moms through our advertising. Instead, we had intended to demonstrate genuine sympathy and appreciation for all that parents do for their babies. We believe deeply that moms know best and we sincerely apologize for disappointing you. Please know that we take your feedback seriously and will take swift action with regard to this ad. We are in process of removing it from our website. It will take longer, unfortunately, for it to be removed from magazine print as it is currently on newstands and in distribution.

–Kathy

Reaction around the office has pretty much mirrored what I’m reading from other industry blogs. Concensus opinion seems to be that while the speed with which they reacted was good, they could have avoided the whole problem by reaching out to their target audience to begin with. At least two bloggers have suggested rewrites. But mostly, everyone is impressed at the speed that this became a serious problem.

Within 24 hours, “motrinmoms” was the #1 search term on Twitter, and over the course of the weekend, search results for Motrin took a noticeable shift to negative feedback. As Gene Grabowski, chair of the crisis and litigation practice at Levick Strategic Communications notes,

“We now have indisputable proof that online marketing, YouTube and Twitter and all that it encompasses is meaningful and has arrived. We are seeing real consequences to a mistake. If [social networks] didn’t matter, you wouldn’t see this type of reaction from J&J or consumers.”

One final note: when a major PR blunder like this happens, it’s tempting to conclude that the people involved were somehow out of touch with the target market, and that someone lost their job. Well, a blogger with a friend at the ad agency who created this campaign says the copywriter is no longer with the agency — She’s on maternity leave.

Note: This was originally posted on my work blog, and I’m re-posting it here for archival purposes.

New Xbox Experience: One Paragraph Review

2008-11-20T18:38:58Z

The new dashboard is really slick. The entire thing has been overhauled, to the point where it feels like a brand new console, rather than just a software upgrade. At first, it’s a little confusing if you’re used to the “blades” interface, because everything has been moved around and reorganized, but I think the new system actually makes more sense, and certainly leaves more room to grow. The interface is dramatically improved from a design perspective, and while it no longer feels like I’m “at the helm of the future,” the new design is certainly a better fit as part of a larger media center, which recognizes that games are just one part of what the xbox can do. The netflix integration works as expected, and there’s a higher emphasis placed on streaming content from your PC to your xbox. The biggest change, though, is the avatar system. Much like the miis on the Wii, these are good for making a caricature of yourself, but it’s hard to get something that looks just right. (In my case, I think it looks pretty good except for the skinny little cartoon neck, which makes it look too thin.) Of course, if you’re not trying to make a photorealistic one, there is quite a bit more potential for insanity. I haven’t had a chance yet to try the feature I’m most excited about — ripping games to the hard drive to improve stability — because I fell asleep during the 20-minute copy process.

Quantum of Solace: One Paragraph Review

2008-11-17T17:43:18Z

If you haven’t seen Casino Royale yet, go see it before you see this one. Unlike Bond movies in the past, which were all stand-alone, this is a true sequel to the first movie. It opens maybe an hour after the finale of Casino Royale, and jumps right into the action. Continuing their general theme of “Bond is an incredible bad-ass,” this movie has gunfights, car chases, knife fights, airplane chases, fist fights, boat chases, and even an opera fight. Where the first movie was a little more cerebral, and spent a good hour focused on the poker game, this one is all action. I love the rebooted Bond, and this one definitely lives up to the old tagline, “Everything He Touches Turns to Excitement!“

This Week’s Del.icio.us bookmarks

2008-11-17T07:30:03Z

Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex
The infamous essay on the infeasibility of Superman sleeping with Lois Lane. This has been out of print for some time now, but Larry Niven put it up on his site.
Tags: superman, comics, steel, kleenex, loislane, lanalang, clarkkent, larryniven, science, biology, sex
A clip from the Firefly Blu-ray reunion featurette.
Joss and some of the cast discuss his ideas for Monster Cattle. I miss Firefly.
Tags: firefly, serenity, josswhedon, bluray, discussion, monsters, cows, cattle, scifi, television, movies
Make Cake in a Mug
Instructions on how to bake a mini-cake in a mug using your microwave and hot cocoa mix in just a few minutes.
Tags: microwave, howto, recipe, cake, mug, chocolate, snack
WW II vet held in Nazi slave camp breaks silence: ‘Let it be known’
"The soldiers, working 12-hour days, were used by the German army to dig tunnels and hide equipment in the final weeks of the war. Less than half of the soldiers survived their captivity and a subsequent death march."
Tags: wwii, war, history, nazis, pow, camp, slaves, terror, terrorism
Video: Speak, the Hungarian Rapper
This guy is awesome. He’s so serious, and you can tell he thinks he’s a complete badass - but the whole thing just flops and feels like an awful joke. "Yeah, c’mon."
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Video: Little Boy Meets Lobster
"Woah! Wow! Daddy! Wow! Can I touch it? No! No, I don’t like to touch it!"
Tags: children, video, lobsters, parenting, hilarious
Trailer: Up by Pixar
Pixar’s new movie looks hilarious. Grumpy old men are comedy gold.
Tags: pixar, video, trailers, movies, up, animation, cgi, disney
Jake Gyllenhaal’s SNL Opening
I’ve been looking for this for awhile, this is pretty low quality, but it’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen on SNL. I love when the "nope, just regular cowboys" line.
Tags: jakegyllenhaal, snl, video, intro, gay, cowboys, musicals, showtunes, crossdressing
Video: Kung Fu Clowns
Urn sent this to me. It is exactly as awesome as it sounds.
Tags: clowns, kungfu, video, advertising
A Butler Well Served by This Election
"For more than three decades Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land… His is a story from the back pages of history. A figure in the tiniest of print. The man in the kitchen."
Tags: eugeneallen, whitehouse, politics, race, racism, class, butlers, presidents
Barack Obama: The 50 facts you might not know
"He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics. While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead. He uses an Apple Mac laptop."
Tags: obama, president, politics, factoids, facts, lists, trivia, comics
The First 100 Days
Infographic comparing every president’s since FDR’s first 100 days.
Tags: presidents, politics, history, charts, graphs, infographics, fdr, first100days
Wil Wheaton’s Fundamental Rule of Driving
"Everyone on the road is an idiot, and they’re actively trying to kill you."
Tags: wilwheaton, rules, driving, parenting

The Parts of the Computer

2008-11-13T00:10:31Z

While digging through some old papers, Annie found this set of pages she colored when she was in second grade in 1986. I love the inclusion of the “stand” as part of the computer. It holds the monitor!

This Week’s Del.icio.us bookmarks

2008-11-10T07:30:03Z

Real Life Photoshop Desktop
Awesome.
Tags: photoshop, real, desktop, tools, photography, art, paint
Strains Between McCain and Palin Aides Go Public
"On election night when it was clear that McCain would be giving a concession speech instead of an acceptance speech, Palin approached McCain with a speech in hand hoping to make her own concession speech… McCain aides made it clear to Palin that she would be a spectator that night, not a speaker…"
Tags: mccain, palin, politics, president, election, campaign, concession, speech
Yes, he did.
"What comes next - a generation of people who will grow up without the automatic preconception that ‘President’ automatically means ‘white guy, probably also old.’ That’s really going to change things in ways you and I, with our blinkered, limited-by-our-experiences-and-upbringing vision, can’t begin to imagine."
Tags: mightygodking, politics, president, election, obama, race, racism, change, hope, future, preconceptions
Pavel Goberman Description from the Oregon Voters’ Guide
Crazy Russian immigrant who uses the first paragraph of his description to pimp his exercise program. He has worked every job imaginable, including beekeeper, and gave himself a PhD in PE. His previous government experience consists entirely of previous candidacies, and time in the Russian Tank Army.
Tags: pavelgoberman, oregon, votersguide, description, biography, education, experience, crazy
And Now for Something Completely Different
Video of a six-legged robot wearing a fedora and sunglasses dancing to "Mambo #5."
Tags: hexapod, robots, dancing, fedoras, sunglasses, loubega, mambo, awesome, video
Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging
"The Frustration-Free Package is recyclable and comes without excess packaging materials such as hard plastic clamshell casings, plastic bindings, and wire ties. It’s designed to be opened without the use of a box cutter or knife and will protect your product just as well as traditional packaging."
Tags: amazon, frustration, packaging, shipping, protection, clamshell, plastic, twistties, recycling, genius
Are Windows Vista icons facing the wrong way?
"This raises an interesting discussion around the ‘psychology’ of design. Could this explain why so many people are turned off by Vista? On the same note, facing left also implies “looking back” as opposed to right - ‘looking forward’."
Tags: icons, ui, design, left, right, vista, ux, psychology, microsoft, windows
What I learned from The Ants
"With their beautifully simple set of behaviors ants can seem a lot like robots. Really stupid robots."
Tags: ants, robots, science, biology, nature
Sarah Palin prank call
Oh, this is just humiliating. Even accepting that she didn’t get the rather obvious hints that it was a prank, the things she’s saying when she thinks it’s REALLY the French President are painful.
Tags: palin, politics, election, campaign, prankcall, video, prank
Video: Pixar’s Up
Teaser site for Pixar’s new movie, Up.
Tags: up, pixar, cgi, disney, cartoons, animation, video, teaser, trailer
Video: Transmetropolitan Cartoon
Screen test for a Transmet cartoon by Noodle Soup, the guys that went on to do the Venture Brothers.
Tags: cartoons, comics, transmetropolitan, warrenellis, noodlesoup, video, screentest, venturebrothers
Video: Baby
"Having a dog totally prepared us for having a baby."
Tags: omg, wtf, video, babies, parenting, pets, dogs, satire, guns, cps, children
Video: The Dark Knight Meets Superman
“Haha, no, seriously, what is it, like heat vision? ‘Cause I have that. It’s awesome.”
Tags: superman, batman, comics, darkknight, satire, video, cartoon
Video: Wassup 2008
It’s been just long enough that this is funny again - and timely.
Tags: wassup, video, budweiser, politics, election, campaign, advertising, change, true

Yes We Did!

2008-11-05T04:26:46Z

The Worst Part of the Matrix

2008-11-05T00:01:39Z

“The absolute worst thing in Matrix III was when Keanu gets to the virtual office of the Big Computer Mind, and he meets, like, a tweedy professor with a white beard. Ugh! At the very least it should have been a fat hacker in a T-shirt, preferably high on pineal extract.”
– Rudy Rucker

Where is Everybody?

2008-11-04T00:28:36Z

You all know this story. In the summer of 1950, Enrico Fermi, the Italian-American physicist and atomic pile-builder, went to lunch at Los Alamos National Laboratory and joined some colleagues there and asked them a question. “Where is everybody?” This confused his colleagues, obviously, because they were sitting right there with him, and then he had to clarify that he wasn’t talking about them. He was talking about the space aliens.

You see, this was only a few years after the supposed flying saucer crash at Roswell, New Mexico, and even though that turned out to be nothing, nothing AT ALL — Merely a downed weather balloon piloted by small hairless men with slits for mouths — still, America had gone saucer-mad, even famous scientists who were eating lunch.

Fermi’s reasoning, if I may paraphrase badly, is that the universe is so vast that it stands to reason there should be other intelligent life out there, and the universe is so old, that unless we were the very first civilization ever to evolve, we should have some evidence of their existence by now, and yet, to the best of our knowledge, we are alone. “Where is everybody,” asked Fermi, and his colleagues had no answer.

Fermi then went on with the same blunt logic to disprove fairies, Sasquatch, God, the possibility of love, and thereafter, as you know, Enrico Fermi ate alone.
– John Hodgman, A Brief Digression on Matters of Lost Time

This Week’s Del.icio.us bookmarks

2008-11-03T07:30:01Z

Sarah Palin Doesn’t Understand the First Amendment
"According to Palin, what the Founders intended with the First Amendment was that political candidates for the most powerful offices in the country and Governors of states would be free to say whatever they want without being criticized in the newspapers."
Tags: palin, politics, election, campaign, firstamendment, freespeech, stupid
Widespread Touchscreen Vote Flipping
"ES&S iVotronics touch screens have already been observed now in four completely separate States, flipping the votes, in the early voting that has taken place to date. Eye-witness reports of repeated, consistent flipping of votes (from Obama to McCain naturally) has already occurred in the States of: West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, and Texas that have had early voting."
Tags: voting, electronic, machines, fraud, failure, fail, problems, troubles, obama, mccain, republicans, democrats, election, politics, campaign
Caught on Tape: Electronic Voting Machines Flipping Obama Votes For McCain, Completely Unreliable
This does not fill me with confidence. I’ve worked tech support for too long to want those guys handling something as important as votes.
Tags: voting, electronic, machines, fraud, bugs, problems, trouble, politics, election, republicans, democrats, obama, mccain
Parodies of the Obey Hope Poster
Turns out there are LOTS of parodies of Shepard Fairey’s "Hope" poster - here are about 100 of them.
Tags: obey, obeygiant, giant, shepardfairey, hope, obama, parody, satire, politics, mccain, palin, election, campaign
How to Write an Episode of Fringe
5) Dr. Bishop says or does something nutty. 6) Conflict! 7) Dr. Bishop proposes some crazy solution to contain the situation. 8) The doctor’s zany solution works! What luck! 9) The X-Squad saves the day! 10) Optional: Agent Dunham sees dead people.
Tags: fringe, satire, howto, writing, television
Judging Books by Their Covers
"In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California’s Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California’s public schools. …Feynman analyzed the Commission’s idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some of the tactics employed by schoolbook salesmen who wanted the Commission to adopt their shoddy products."
Tags: richardfeynman, physics, math, curriculum, textbooks, schools, stupidity, evaluation, corruption
Video: Red 5’s Golden Ticket Program
The msn news video covering Red 5’s "Golden Ticket" recruiting program. Worth a look.
Tags: red5, video, games, recruiting, outsidethebox, goldenticket, hiring, design
If It’s Too Social, You’re Too Old
Khoi hits the nail on the head: "I recently came to this conclusion: as an interaction designer, if I’m not actively using social networks, then I’m just not doing my job."
Tags: khoivinh, subtraction, web, development, design, interaction, socialnetworking, facebook, flickr, twitter, social
Product Placement Movie Posters
"What if movie posters were more honest? What if the theatrical one-sheet wasn’t filled with floating heads of the main stars, but instead featured all the brand tie-ins and product placements up-front?"
Tags: movies, posters, productplacement, honesty, advertising, marketing