The economy is in a slump. Companies are worried how they’re going to meet next quarter’s profits. So they hire an ad agency to come up with a viral video campaign that’s going to be so fresh and inspiring that it will boost sales. That’s what McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the largest consumer company within Johnson & Johnson, which is responsible for the Motrin brand, were banking on when they released their new video campaign and Motrin Moma-Alogue.
The results: a slick online video narrated by a snarky young woman saying babywearing on a sling, the shwing, the pouch, whatever, is fashionable and “supposedly it’s a real bonding experience” but moms that wear their babies “cry more.” But don’t worry mommies of the world “Motrin feels your pain.” They are here to help.
The viral video worked in the sense that it went viral but not in the way the marketers of Motrin were hoping for. Just hours after the campaign launched moms began blogging, tweeting and posting Facebook updates about how offensive the new Motrin campaign is to mothers. Women were so angered by the video that it became one of the most popular subjects tweeted about this weekend on Twitter. Talk about a PR disaster. Over 100 blogs featured headlines such as “Motrin Makes Moms Mad” to “Motrin Giving Moms a Headache”.
Tweets on Twitter are flying across the screen by the second using the hashtag #motrinmoms. Tweets read “RU FREAKING KIDDING ME? So many things wrong with that I don’t know where to start,” said @thecouponcoup. “I am shocked by that Motrin ad. Count me in on the boycott,” said @blondeblogger. “They totally do not get us at all,” said @DealSeekingMom.
Katja Presnal, a former fashion model turned mompreneur was so offended by the Motrin ad that she created a video capturing people’s Twitter responses to the Motrin video campaign juxtaposed with photos of mothers and their babies. In just a few hours the video has received over 3200 views.
"I felt the ad was offensive for mothers who use slings, making it sound like moms who wear slings do it only because it's the fashionable thing to do," said Presnal. "It's a huge mistake that they didn't test the ads with their target market before putting it out."
Presnal raises an excellent point. Did the ad agency who created this viral video campaign for their client Motrin bother to consult with real moms and test this ad concept? Did any PR or marketing executives who happen to be mothers and work for McNeil Consumer Healthcare bother to look at this ad? It’s hard to imagine how this ad made it passed the storyboards. Nonetheless there are always lessons to be learned from PR disasters. Public relations expert Peter Shankman recommends the following:
Hire someone who is part of your target market.
Don’t believe EVERYTHING YOUR AGENCY SAYS.
Screw focus groups, use Twitter.
Suck it up, apologize, and move on.
I will add to Shankman’s sound advice.
Never, ever underestimate the power of mommy bloggers to organize around a consumer campaign that completely insults their intelligence.
Update: As of late last night, Motrin shut down its site. Kathy Widmer, VP of Marketing at McNeil sent a note to bloggers issuing an apology. However, there is still a large print campaign associated with the video that will be hitting the streets near you.
Less then 24 hours after Barack Obama and Joe Biden were elected to the White House they launched Change.gov, a site that highlights their agenda on issues ranging from a plan to revive the economy to fixing our health care system. There has been a lot of discussion about what President-wlect Obama will do as the first digitally connected POTUS. Change.gov begins to offer insight in how the administration will be marketing “change” for the next 4 years. Front and center on the homepage is a section called Open Government and asks people to share their stories and ideas, “and be part of bringing positive lasting change to this country.” Another great interactive feature on the site is "Share Your Vision," which asks citizens to share their views on "where President-Elect Obama should lead this country."
Change.gov will also share information on the transition process and President-elect Obama’s selection for Cabinet members. The jobs section allows prospective applicants to apply for positions in the Obama-Biden Administration. And the site features a blog. The first and only entry was on November 5th at 4PM, and featured a YouTube video of President-Elect Obama’s final speech of the presidential campaign that promised change in Washington. Too bad the blog has not been updated since.
While some of the site remains sparse, and some experts have already commented on the lack of engaging design, it was a smart move to launch Change.gov. It keeps people involved, and demonstrate's the coming administration's commitment to bottom up participation.
After you check out Change.gov, head on over to Flickr where President Elect Obama's campaign team posted photos of him and his family waiting for the results on Election Day.
Voters across the U.S. will have a nifty tool at their disposal on Election Day to report their voting experiences through TwitterVoteReport.com, a new monitoring platform co-developed by the blog techPresident and an all volunteer crew of technology and social media experts. How long is the wait in Richmond, VA? Were you turned away at the polls for some absurd reason? Or perhaps you had a really positive voting experience that you want to share with the world. Just login to Twitter and use the code, or hashtag, #votereport on Election Day to add your personal report.
Voters can also:
Send text messages to 66937 (MOZES) starting with the keyword #votereport
Call their automated system at 567-258-VOTE to report about conditions, using any touch-tone phone.
Download the Iphone app.
According to Allison Fine, one of the pioneers behind TwitterVoteReport.com, early voters have already started using the system to report problems such as “I “Only waited 20 mins and I was out in 10) and their concerns (absentee ballots in #48823 require extra postage. Don’t let a $0.15 slipup keep your voice from being heard!”
Advocacy groups and major media ranging from Common Cause to Rock the Vote and the BBC will be using TwitterVoteReport.com feeds to report on voters’ experiences.
TwitterVoteReport.com was implemented in just three weeks, after Fine from the Personal Democracy Forum and Nancy Scola, Associate Editor of techPresident received an incredible response to a techPresident blog post that encouraged voters to use open hashtags on twitter. “We wanted to see a critical mass of messages be generated that could then be mapped and plotted and visualized in creative ways,” said Fine. In a matter of days programmers and technologists jumped on board and started the wiki http://wiki.votereport.us/ to plan and document the project.
Andrew Rasiej, founder of techPresident, said TwitterVoteReport “is an ideal example of the combined power of social media and impassioned citizens to participate in our democracy. Power and control is shifting from politicians and campaigns to people and we'll be able to see that in real-time on Election Day."
In the tech world, where tools and gadgets are way cool one day and so 2004 the next, is blogging really dead? According to Paul Boutin, who ironically writes for the Sillicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag, blogging is out and being replaced by the next generation of social networking tools - Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. In a recent WIRED Magazine article, Boutin says that the mainstream media has taken over the blogosphere with professional writers, who break the big stories these days.
“Scroll down Technorati's list of the top 100 blogs and you'll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post, Engadget, and TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can't keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day,” says Boutin.
Boutin raises excellent points about the commercialization of the blogosphere but fails to recognize that blogs are still a crucial web tool to distribute info and news even if they are not listed in the top 100 on Technorati. Furthermore, while microblogging tools like Twitter are certainly cool they are limited in telling the longer, more personal story.
What do other experts think of Boutin’s controversial claim about the death of blogging?
“No. Blogging isn't out of style,” says social media expert Chris Brogan. “Twitter and things like it are a moment in a timestream. Blogs are a bit more anchored, and allow us to stay within a context. The other tools are good, but they don't replace blogging.”
Elisa Camahort Page, cofounder of BlogHer (a network of over 2200 women authored blogs) says she thinks of Twitter more as a mega-chat and adds: “blogs continue to be the place where people introduce, explore and discuss events in their lives, ideas in their minds and the causes they care about.”
Investors could not agree more. A few months ago venture capitalists poured $5 million into the BlogHer network. They also negotiated a partnership with NBC Universal who owns iVillage, Oxygen.com, and BravoTV.vom, which will give them access to BlogHer content, as well as promotional opportunities across the BlogHer network. In January of 2008, Akismet, one of the largest blog platform providers received $29.5 million in venture funding for continued development of Wordpress. Not bad! Analysts predict that the major blog networks such as Blogger, TypePad, Moveable Type, etc will rake in $300 million for 2008. Not bad either.
According to the blog search engine Technorati 175,000 new blogs are created every single day. 570,000 entries are posted daily and reach 70 percent of web users according to a March study by Universal McCann.
While blogging still remains quite popular and lucrative for many, there is a lot more competition and major players then there were in 2004 so standing out from the millions of bloggers is a challenge.
Camahort Page and Brogan offer the following advice.
“Promoting one's blog is not much different now than it ever was...find your blogging community and become an active part of it. Read, comment, link, reference, cite,” says Camahort Page. “There are also more sites than ever to get your work and your word out...BlogHer,Kirtsy, StumbleUpon, yes, Twitter and Facebook. The list goes on. Use them, they want to be used.”
Brogan adds, “NOW is where Twitter makes more sense. Being active, being part of the conversation, commenting more are all ways to get attention and awareness flowing. Another way is to find great people doing great work and praise them for it. Do MORE than anyone else in being attentive and loving to the people in your space, and it comes back. I'm living proof.”
Fed up with tech conferences that rarely represent women on panels and constantly reading news articles about technology that seldom quote women tech experts (as if we don’t exist), I started Women Who Tech. The group brings together talented and renowned women breaking new ground in technology who use their tech savvy skills to transform the world and inspire change. Women have been at the forefront of developing technology before the days of floppy discs, CRT monitors and corded mice yet major tech conferences and the media continue to fail to represent gender-balanced perspectives. Why is this? Do men do a better job at promoting themselves and developing their own personal brand? Are women in tech fully embracing their own power?
Susan Mernit, one of the most inspiring women in tech will be discussing what it takes to be a leader in this industry today at 11AM PST during the Embracing Your Power teleseminar. Highlights include how women can improve their skills as owners and drivers of businesses, both within a larger workplace and within their own business. What kind of emotional intelligence, mindset and conviction does it take to be as powerful and clear as you can be in your life—and apply that to whatever you do?
This talk with Susan Mernit, who's created content, developed product and run businesses—and non-profit endeavors—in a wide variety of settings, from companies as large as AOL and Yahoo to her own small startup—draws on her 15+ years of experience working in tech and media, and on conversations with dozens of entrepreneurial women. This is a don't miss conversation if you're a woman in tech looking to connect the dots and better integrate your own professional ambitions and start embracing your own power. I’ll be there. Will you?
"You invent it. We fund it." This is the Knight Foundations News Challenge slogan which will award $5 million for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news and information exchange. The deadline for applications is November1, 2008. The contest is open to innovators worldwide, from software designers to journalists and everyone in between. To help people interested in applying for a grant, the Knight Foundation has created the News Challenge Garage where applicants can be mentored and peer reviewed by past awardees and some of the biggest web gurus such as Mary Hodder, founder of Dabble.com.
Google Announces 10 to the 100th Power Contest
As one of the wealthiest corporations in the world, Google has continued to stick to their mission of donating 1% of Google's equity and profits, as well as employee time, to address some of the world's most urgent problems. To celebrate its 10th anniversary (only 10, seems like forever), Google has announced Project 10 to the 100th. The idea is pretty simple: submit an idea about how to help the world in a category, Google will select the top 100 ideas, anyone can vote on those, the top 20 will move on to the semi-finals where an advisory board will pick the five winners. Google will provide $10 million to implement these ideas.
It's unclear whether or not each idea will get $2 million, Google says only it wants to help the most number of people possible, so the division of the $10 million may depend on the exact nature of the ideas and the budget required. To learn more about the project check out http://www.project10tothe100.com
Oh and 10 to the 100th power is a googol, in case you're wondering.
On Our Radar
Speaking of cool projects, if you live in the Bay area be sure and check out Kathy Kleinman's documentary on the first computer programmers: women who programmed the Eniac. The film will screen on October 22nd at the Computer History Museum followed by a discussion with Jean Jennings Bartik, one of the inspriring programmers in the film.
In the past two years Twitter has grown from an online community of big techies to a community that is inclusive of many niche audiences including moms and political junkies. Twitter has also empowered people across the world to use their API as well as launch similar micro blogging sites such as Frazr, the French and German version of Twitter, and Jisko in Spain.
Just this past month two new community niche sites Gospelr.com and Twittermoms.com launched and rely heavily on Twitter’s technology. Gospelr, a microblogging community for Christians was started by John Saddington in hopes of challenging people to take their faith and broadcast it to the world wide web. The site is growing at approximately 100 users a day and people are using the site to meet other Christians.
“Some of the users have expressed that they've been encouraged by the service, and have been able to meet others they would not have ever had the chance to meet,” said Saddington. “Some are using it as a digital prayer wall. Others are using it to communicate news and updates about their offline ministries and organizations.”
Gospelr was built using Twitter’s API, as well as Open Source technology, MySQL, and PHP.
Twittermoms.com, built on Ning, was launched in early September to simply connect with other mom’s. “As a stay at home mom, you sometimes don’t get enough grown-up interaction during the day,” says Founder Megan Calhoun. “Twitter was great for connecting with people, and I noticed a lot of moms on it – but no easy way to learn more about them.”
In just three weeks, the site has grown from 4 members to over 1500 moms and over 20,000 unique visitors mostly through word of mouth and a small amount of online advertising. 78% of users on twittermoms.com manage their own blog, and nearly all are connected to followers on Twitter.
Currently, Calhoun is working on creating a Twittermoms Holiday Catalog for women to feature their blogs, wares, products, and services in an electronic catalog (with descriptions of 140 characters or less – like a tweet). The catalog will go live November 1, and will be distributed on the site.
How does Calhoun feel about Twittermom’s success? “When moms unite, it’s powerful.”
If you're a politics junkie you're probably a) addicted to polls and b) becoming increasingly concerned about the ultimate nightmare in presidential elections, the electoral college tie. If you care about one or both, check out fivethirtyeight.com.
Fivethirtyeight.com is another one of those sites that aggregate polling, however they use a much different methodology from most of the others, including simulating the election 10,000 times (based on the latest polling) before updating the site. While it remains to be seen how ultimately reliable it will be, it provides a wealth of info, charts and numbers for your late-night poll junkie fixes.
Today they published a new article about the statistical likelihood of an electoral college tie. To see how easy it would be to happen consider the following scenario. Obama wins every state John Kerry won in 2004 (pretty likely) and wins Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado as well (states he has been consistently ahead of McCain in). If that happens you get a 269-269 tie and the election is thrown to the House of Representatives, where Obama would almost certainly be elected President. Of course the partisan uproar, bickering and gridlock that would ensue might make the 2000 election look like a fond memory.
When Hurricane Gustav threatened to crash into New Orleans and bring more destruction to the city that never recovered from Hurricane Katrina, Andy Carvin, a social media strategist for National Public Radio, used his Web 2.0 savvy skills to take action and start the websites hurricanes08.org and hurricanewiki.org. The sites serve as an information aggregator for the latest information on hurricanes threatening the US and provide an easy way for volunteers to connect with communities.
“I thought we needed something that could connect the dots,” said Carvin. Once Carvin developed the idea he put up the “Bat Signal” and friends and volunteers including Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigs List and Deanna Zandt, a media technologist for progressive and grassroots activist organizations pitched in to help. Newmark helped promote the site while Zandt spearheaded the development of the wiki.
“I was surprised to see the amount of official information that was strewn all over the place with little cohesion-- from federal and local government to NGOs, in various states of updated-ness. It seemed immediately critical to create a one-stop-shopping repository,” said Zandt.
Within a few hours they setup hurricanewiki.org to collect static resources, a Ning social network at hurricanes08.org to aggregate dynamic content from the web, and Twitter accounts such as @StormWire to spread the word. “Essentially, we've got the wiki as our reference desk, our social network as our operations center and our Twitter feeds as our news wire service,” said Carvin.
Once the sites launched, Carvin, Zandt and team promoted the sites using Twitter, blogging and listservs. Within 24 hours they had 500 people signed up to participate in the effort. Close to 100,000 people visited the site the day Hurricane Gustav came ashore.
“We've received very positive feedback for the project, which I think is great, but I'm more interested in the amount of volunteers we have contributing” said Carvin. “We've had to deal with 3 storms in about 10 days, and it's been a challenge sustaining everyone's energy level to contribute in a consistent, coordinated fashion. So all the news and blog coverage has helped recruit more volunteers, but we still need a lot more if we're going to stay on top of Hurricane Ike coming ashore in less than 24 hours.”
