positive disruption by: Tom Martin

Where is the URL?

FastCompany sent me this great offer. $5 for a year of FC. What strikes me as odd though, is why are they forcing me to mail it in versus just subscribe online? Given the nature of FC as a publication and the low cost offer, you'd think they'd force me to go online to keep cost of subscription process down. Now I just have to hope I didn't throw the envelope away. Anyone have any thoughts on why a company would want to do this offline versus online?

Motrin Screwed Up When They Pulled Their Ads

Unless you've been living under a rock lately, you probably have heard the #motrinmoms flap that started on Twitter and led to Motrin's pulling of a nationwide ad campaign. I chose to focus my latest Ad Age post on the topic and think you might find my research interesting. I've reprinted the entire post below. Do me a favor, if you share a link to this on your blog or Twitter please ad #MotrinResponse so I can track it.

Over the weekend I watched as a few outspoken mommy bloggers started a firestorm via Twitter. Throughout the weekend I was seeing Tweets about a new Motrin campaign and could see a groundswell of anger rising. And then it happened on Monday. Motrin pulled the campaign, issued an apology and the social media mavens declared victory. And most folks agree that Motrin did the right thing.

But honestly, I disagree. In fact, I think Motrin blew a huge opportunity.

A couple of items to create context.

•    Based on data from Radian6 and our own manual review of hashtag #motrinmoms, “motrin campaign” shows about 900 tweets between Friday and Monday and #motrinmoms hashtag had about 1,500 tweets. A big number. But a lot of them were from the same folks having a conversation via Twitter. All told, just over 1,000 Twitter handles are found on #motrinmoms with the vast majority of the tweets considered “neutral” in tone. Heck, the positive toned tweets outnumbered the truly negative tone tweets. Though, for the record, the positive ones seems to be associated with males.  So lots of noise, but few noisemakers.

•    I was able to find about 300-400 blog posts on the subject (depending on keyword string) from November 14-16 and 3,000 posts if you track through to 11/18/08. Again, lots of noise. But the vast majority of it was AFTER the issue surfaced and bloggers (including males) around the world simply commented on a hot topic.

•    And finally, my own quick poll of 150 heavy Internet using moms showed that 145 of them are unaware of the campaign or backlash. And of the 5 that were, not one was planning to boycott or complain to Motrin.

Which begs the question, if the uproar was a vocal minority (as the data above would seem to support) then why did the ad have to be pulled so quickly? Why did Motrin feel the need to move so swiftly?

Why? Because they and likely their agency, Taxi, simply reacted instead of responding.  And in doing so, they missed a huge opportunity to exploit the real power of social media – dialog.

I would have counseled Motrin to do two things.

First, reach out to the offended and apologize via the channel that person used to complain. Acknowledge that the ad obviously is flawed as it certainly offended some but in the spirit of learning from mistakes, Motrin wants to invite these moms to help Motrin create better ads in the future by participating in a dialog at Motrin.com. But I wouldn’t have yanked the campaign right away because if moms can’t see it, they can’t comment on it and J&J loses a learning opportunity. There was time to “wait and see” without risking retail backlash.

If a reporter wants to interview Kathy Widmer, VP Marketing for J&J, let them.  But make sure Kathy gets her “we understand the ad has challenges, we’ve apologized and we’re inviting moms to help us understand how to fix it” point in the final story.

The result:

By asking the bloggers, Twitterati and everyone else for that matter to join the conversation at Motrin.com, Motrin gets to learn from its “mistake.” As it is now, all Motrin knows is that they offended some folks. But they don’t know if they offended all moms or just a vocal minority. Additionally, they know they did something wrong, but if you read the tweets and blog posts/comments, no one really offers Motrin any advice about how they should target moms. That insight is worth its weight in gold.

Had Motrin sought to continue the dialog versus shutting it down, they could have fielded what amounts to a huge online focus group. They could have talked directly to a market they really want to understand. And if they got really innovative, they could have tried to unite that group as a community that appreciates Motrin’s willingness to engage in two-way dialog. To be part of a community that might even agree to stick around and participate in future conversations.

Instead of playing defense, they should have played offense. I think in the long run, they’d be more successful marketing to moms, or at least less likely to piss some of them off. 

Tonight, I found this blog post by Jennifer Lucio over at ZDNet. It points to a very recent Lexalytics analysis that supports my article above.

UPDATE November 24, 2008 - Ad Age quotes me several times in their Motrin story, "Crashing Motrin-gate" -- so very, very cool.

StrawberryFrog's Makeketing Approach

George Wynn of StrawberryFrog spoke to our New Orleans Ad Club today. Interesting thoughts included: - create ideas then figure out medium - create cultural movements not campaigns - define brand's role in society - activate consumer versus advertise to - litmus test: if we made a campaign would you (consumer) wear it on a t-shirt? - we live in a participation society, leverage that to your benefit - open source and organic cultures are driving a lot of what consumers care about - peer to peer is driving WOM to new levels of importance - commodity has morphed to community. Products are badges of values and that is why consumer buys. Lots of really interesting and thoughtful ideas that make you stop and think about what if any changes you might consider for your brand. So, do you think StrawberryFrog's cultural movement approach is a marketing ploy or a serious updating of classical marketing thought?

Common sense branding

Service brands are a delivered experience. So it always amazes me when big service brands spend millions on advertising but precious little on the things that really count. This is the line I'm in at Chase waiting to deposit a few checks. There are three tellers. It's noon. And everyone like me is trying to do their banking on their lunch hour so why wouldn't a downtown branch have every teller open? Makes no sense.

The value of hanging out with customers

A quick 3 minute video from Ad Age. Listen closely to the opening remarks by the speaker, Verizon Senior VP Digital Marketing, John Harrobin. Every year companies spend billions of dollars fielding focus groups, surveys, and such where we batter consumers with a host of questions.

But yet, Verizon -- whom I'm assuming falls into that big user of research group -- missed this... why? Because the glaring, yet seldom acknowledged, flaw in all research is that you're limited by your own knowledge or maybe lack of knowledge.

A consumer can't answer a question you don't ask, and if you're not living amongst your consumers I'm pretty sure you don't know what you don't know. So, in that kind of a world, you have to go beyond regular research to make sure you truly have the powerful consumer insights you need to compete in today's cluttered marketplace.

Palin Africa Story a Hoax

Wow. After reading this story in the NY Times about how two filmmakers pulled a LonelyGirl15 on the world news media I fully came to realize the true power of Social Media. Who among us didn't hear directly (via a newscast) or from a friend the story about how Palin didn't know that Africa was a continent and not a country? The factoid was bantered about endlessly in the final days of the election and I've got to think factored into a good number of folks who ultimately voted Obama versus McCain -- citing "she's a dolt and he picked her as his running mate, which makes me question his ability to make good decisions" or some derrivitive rant along these lines.

And here, now, after a landmark election, the Times reports to the world that it was all a ruse. A shill by two filmmakers looking to land a TV gig.

Think about how much money McCain and Obama spent trying to get their issues out there and paint themselves and each other in a positive/negative light. They tried to link each other to negative ideas and put millions of dollars behind the effort.

And with little more than time and a good bit of effort, these two guys are able to firmly plant and link a powerfully negative idea to Palin without running a single network TV spot.

Still think Social Media isn't something that you really need to be deep diving into?

Social Media Mistakes

Just too funny not to share. From New Media Lisa, a funny "how not to sell" story that I hope is truly real because it is just about the dumbest thing I've ever heard of someone doing.

Thanks to Lisa. Who by the way, you should follow on Twitter...she always has good stuff.

What Marketers can learn from Obama

Everyone loves a winner and is more than willing to point out what we can learn from that victory. So as I'm tired from staying up late watching election coverage, today's post will just be a linkity link love fest of various articles over the last several months that all talk about what you can learn from Obama's campaign.

From Al Ries, not normally my favorite read but this is good stuff and dead on. FastCompany's contribution to the discussion. The Gardian with a special focus on typeface usage. The NY Times thought we could all learn a thing or two about Mobile Marketing. Barack's USP and his use of the web to raise funds. And lastly, what Non-profits can learn from his historic campaign.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, just a handful that turned up in a quick google search. There are a wee bit over 392,000 more on Google.

AOL to Launch 'Morning Rush' Video Clip Series

An interesting trend that really started with DirectTV I think -- multi-casting categories. DirectTV does it with news (one channel that displays live feeds of all 6 major cable news channels) and sports (NFL Package) where you can watch six games at once. See a game that is catching your fancy more than the one you are currently watching/listening too... just click over to that mini-screen and now the audio feed will be that game versus the one you were on. Same scenario for news. A really great way to cast a wide content antenea without having to channel hop. 

Not sure why AOL is trying to link to Facebook... a desktop widget seems far more appropriate.

Just goes to show that American's are becoming even more fragmented... now a consumer won't even have to turn the channel to see alternative content. They'll just click to a different section of the window.