Hasta La Creative!

If you’re going to launch an online ad on a Saturday and spark outrage among your target audience, you might want to plan to work the weekend. Motrin caused the aforementioned fuss with an ad aimed at moms who practice “baby wearing,” the fine art of carrying your kid in a sling or backpack. The spot comes off sounding pretty insulting to these moms, whom it implies are treating their babies like fashion accessories. When mom bloggers got wind of the spot, they started a tidal wave of criticism, flooding Twitter with thousands of angry comments about Motrin. (Here’s a video compilation of some of the irate feedback.) Assuming the ad was the work of Motrin agency Taxi New York, a blogger contacted the agency’s director of corporate communications, who was reportedly unaware of the online firestorm. Social media professionals were quick to point out that there’s no good excuse these days for failing to notice that your new ad went over like a fart in church. “Motrin apparently did little to no monitoring of their intended audience before or during the Twitterstorm,” writes new-media maven Mack Collier, “which is still baffling to me in this day and age of free and easy tools to let you do just that.” UPDATE: Motrin has now apologized in a message on its homepage.

—Posted by David Griner