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Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’
Motrin Heard the News *UPDATED*
It has been interesting to see how this has been unfolding today.
My YouTube video has gotten over 2500 views, my blog posts mentioned at Peter Shankman’s blog, and at Mashable, written by Sarah Evans. Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting posted my video, so did 5 Minutes for Mom. And over 60 blogs blogged about it today and linked to Skimbaco Lifestyle.
A lot of upset moms.
Bad PR.
And silence from Motrin - until just an hour ago, when Motrin.com was taken down - for little upkeep called taking the ad down.
I also just received an email from Kathy Widmer, Vice President of Marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare.
Dear Katja -
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
Kathy Widmer
VP of Marketing - Pain, Pediatrics, GI, Specialty
McNeil Consumer Healthcare
Great - looks like the clean up of the mess has started, and so far done right. Looking forward seeing what happens next.
Motrin’s website was down for good 15 hours, and now this message has replaced the ad:
This is a great start, and hopefully a wake up call, not just for companies involved but for the rest of corporate America. Companies need to be on social media, and communicate with their target market.
Even if people don’t agree that the ad was/wasn’t offensive (which by the way is a personal opinion, and same way that we can’t say someone is wrong because they don’t like tuna fish, you can’t say that moms who found this ad offensive are wrong), the fact reminds that it took 24 hours from Motrin to response anything to those who were offended. Many in social media think 24 hours is a long time to response, we are used to instant gratification, but for a company who isn’t involved in social media, it was some what impressive to get any type of response within 24 hours and on a Sunday evening.
Motrin Makes Moms Mad
Dear Motrin Marketing Team,
I am hoping you will feel our pain, and you have enough Motrin to survive the Motrin babywearing campaign headache you will be feeling in the next couple of days, maybe even weeks. I am truly sorry if someone looses a job over this, but frankly, this would have been easily avoided - by asking a few babywearing moms, what they thought of your babywearing = pain ad.
Me and several other moms in the online communities were offended by your ad targeting moms, which said:
Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion.
I mean in theory it’s a great idea.
…
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.
The advertising video started a discussion on Twitter.com, and in the mommy blogging community. Jessica Gottlieb recommended using a #motrinmoms hashtag for the discussion and “a few hours and two thousand tweets later #MotrinMoms is the #1 search on Twitter, eclipsing SNL for the first time since Obama was elected” .
I asked my followers on Twitter what they thought of the the ad:
And the responses were flooding… I wanted to collect the message for Motrin, but unfortunately YouTube lets you make only a 10 minute video - and I couldn’t fit every comment for the ten minutes!
Here is only a short list of blog posts covering the Motrin ad fiasco:
Motrin’s New Ad Attacking Babywearing
Motrin Ad Bashes Baby Wearing
Motrin the Anti-Mom
Twitter Moms Uproar Over Motrin Video
Twitter Crouwd Isn’t Inviting Motrin Moms to Their Playdate
Motrin Moms React
And since it is 4 o’clock on Sunday morning when I’m writing this (it sucks that bad PR happens when the marketing team has a day off, doesn’t it?) , I’m keeping my marketing advice simple:
1. Always know your target market.
2. If you don’t know your target market - hire someone who does. For example, when marketing to moms - ask moms!
3. Don’t underestimate the power of the synergy of blogging communities like mommy bloggers.
4. You have to be using social media so you can monitor and take control when something like this happens. Monday morning is not fast enough. Everyone will know your story told by someone else but you by noon on Sunday.
The good news is, that any company marketing to moms can achieve amazing results by the help of the moms & the mommy blogging community. The ways companies can do this:
1. Hire a Chief Mom Officer, who knows the target market & marketing. Or hire Mom Experts to answer your questions how you can reach moms. (Motrin: hire a Chief Mom Officer, soon launching MomForce will be a great source)
2. Ask what you can do to moms, not what moms can do for you.
3. Show that you genuinely care, start a conversation and listen the answers your target market is giving you.
Written by Katja Presnal
Mommy Blogger
PR / Social Media Marketing Consultant
Mother of Three
katja dot presnal at skimbaco dot com
Do you do business with Companies or People? Essential Social Media Marketing Lesson.
Me and Beth Schoenfeldt at Collective-E launch party
One of the mantras I learned from my entrepreneur Dad a long time ago is
“Businesses do not do business with businesses. There is always a person in a company doing business with another person in a company.”
Let me explain why understanding this is vital for your success in social media marketing.
TWO WAY COMMUNICATION
The main thing about social media marketing is that it’s not one way communication. It’s TWO way - you talk to your audience/community and it talks to you and you listen, take notes, act and that’s how you make the results!
There are several how-to-get-rich-on-social-media handbooks telling you to send auto-response notes and teaching how to do advertising on social media sites. The same type of handbooks tell you how to increase the number of followers or subscribers, how to “catch” people’s email addresses and how to build “landing pages”.
Don’t waste your money or time on those handbooks.
While learning how to make Facebook fan pages or how to really use Twitter for self-promotion is important, SEO is important and advertising is important, the most important thing about social media marketing is to learn to do two-way-one-to-one-communication, not how to blast out information to masses.
See, blasting out information is the old school way of doing things, also called “shoot and pray” - blasting out information to large quantities and praying something sticks somewhere and you receive the wanted result. The new way of doing things is to send out information to a trusted network of people who already know you.
CASE STUDY: BLASTING TO MASSES VERSUS CONTACTING YOUR NETWORK
I was recently working with a project that needed bloggers’ participation and I needed to get 5-10 bloggers involved. I contacted 10 bloggers who already knew who I was, and 10 bloggers who didn’t know me, but who blogged in the target market I was looking for. Out the first group, of ten people who already knew me, nine said yes to the project. Out of the ten who didn’t know me, nobody said yes.
Out of 20 bloggers I contacted I got 9, that’s 45% return rate on the whole group, and 90% return rate on the group who already knew me. Sadly, in this example the return rate on the “shoot and pray” method was 0% - I wonder how many unknown to me bloggers I would have had to contact to get the 9 bloggers I needed for the project.Katja Presnal
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS MAKES DOING BUSINESS A PLEASURE
Don’t get me wrong here - I’m not even close to suggesting mixing business and pleasure, but saying that doing business with people you like and know is much more pleasurable than doing business with someone you don’t like. Me? Frankly, I try to avoid doing business with people I don’t like.
The personal relationships matter in business, and with the social media tools people can easier find the people they want to do business. Social media sites also make referring people easy and finding business partners people who you already know recommend. The whole beauty of sites like Twitter is that you can easily jump into a conversation with people and get connected without even having to just talk business. When people know who you are as a person, they are more likely to do business with you.
Also, when you get to know a business person you like, you will want to do business with her/him and often can create something new and exciting with a company that on the first look may have seemed like the unlikely match with your company.
CASE STUDY: CROSS-PROMOTION WITH A “FRIEND” OR AN “ENEMY”
Sam’s Sandwich Shop had been open for a year and Sam wanted to do a big birthday party to get more potential customers to visit his shop. Sam sort of wanted to do cross-promotion with one of the other store-owners in the same strip-mall. A lot of customers bought both, a sandwich from Sam and a smoothie from Pete’s Smoothies next door, and it would have been a natural connection to do cross-promotion. However, Sam and Pete didn’t get along at all.
Sam mentioned this to Ashley, the flower shop owner, and since they had been helping each others out in with other business questions, they decided to do a cross-promotional campaign together. Sam’s Sandwich Shop was decorated by flowers (giving ideas what kind of bouquets work for birthdays) and Ashley hosted a “How to make centerpieces” class and served sandwiches for her clients. They advertised both events on a same newspaper ad, splitting the cost. Many people had only visited either one of the businesses before and now were introduced to another business in the same location. Both Sam and Ashley received positive feedback for their events, and received new customers for their businesses.
Many people in the social media world focus more on the word “media” and they even call it “new media” instead of social media. However, the “social” part is essential, and being the gal or guy who everyone wants to do business with is the key to success. You do not get there by just blasting self-promotional information.
When your business partners and customers become part of your community, you will have a word-of-mouth marketing network built in, and you can leverage it for business when needed. These people already know you and trust you, and know that you are not just using them to promote your business, they know they can trust you to give your helping hand for them too.
Me? I have taken social media to the next level - I am meeting people in person, like Beth Schoenfeldt, Sabina Ptacin and Katie Hellmuth from the recently launched Collective-E, a women’s networking company offering support and advice for womenpreneurs. It would be risky to take your online business relations offline, if you are not being authentic and honest online, my tip is - be yourself, no matter what.
Monthly New York City TweetUp
@ktjames, @SavvyAuntie, @ReelInvitations, @katjapresnal, @PopJudaica - and the Schlep-bags in the September TweetUp in NYC
So I have decided to organize a monthly New York City TweetUp. Yes, once a month we’ll pick a nice place to go and have a coffee or drinks, lunch or dinner, and just talk, see friends and meet new faces.
While I love sharing my ideas how to leverage twitter for business, and how Twitter can be a marketing, sales and even advertising tool, for me personally and most importantly - Twitter is a place where my friends are.
I have developed such deep relationships with many amazing women I’ve met at Twitter. I know, seems crazy, especially because they only give you 140 characters, right? I kid you not. The tweeting has evolved to emailing, chatting and to phone conversations (hello, let’s all start using Skype, OK? My phone bill was 650$ last month!) - and now face to face meetings!
My virtual life is becoming more and more one with my real life.
So please join me and other amazing New York women on my monthly TweetUps.
Next One: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 6 PM, Film Centre Cafe, 635 Ninth Avenue, New York City
More info and RSVP - you can also RSVP leaving a comment here.
