Hasta La Creative!

There are times when a brand misses its cue. Sometimes it’s worse than that. Sometimes the brand offends. That’s what happened when Motrin (whose site is down at this time) ran an ad that offended, of all people, moms.

You don’t want to get moms mad. Look what happened to drunk drivers.

Here’s but one of many responses to the ad emerging from the ether:

Andy Beal says Motrin should follow his steps for apologizing: be sincere, be transparent, and be consistent.

Motrin needs to quickly apologize–before this reaches the mainstream media–and then do some damage control–perhaps find the most vocal detractors and bring them on board to quickly story-board an alternative video.

What can the rest of us learn from this? Never assume you know your target audience. Never assume that just because you’ve created something “viral” that the sentiment will always be positive. And, always build your social media campaign with some input from those who represent ALL target audience.

It appears that the brand is using MotrinMoms on Twitter to do outreach and handle this pr crisis. Twitter user, Katja Presnal, a Social Media Marketing consultant in the middle of this fray, received an email just minutes ago from Vice President of Marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare saying, “they didn’t mean to offend moms.”

So, what Motrin is losing in the botched ad, they may be making up for in Twitterverse.

p.s. Then there’s this unrelated oddity.