In case you were still waiting for concrete evidence that social media buzz really matters to the business world, it’s here. What started as a single weekend Twitter post on Motrin’s latest ad campaign for the over-the-counter pain reliever evolved into a full-blown crisis for Motrin manufacturer Johnson & Johnson. By Monday morning, the campaign was abandoned and J&J was forced to issue an apology.
It started on a Friday night, when blogger Jessica Gottlieb got wind of the Motrin ad campaign, which had actually been running for nearly two weeks. She thought the ads implied that Moms use their infants as fashion accessories and vented her outrage to her more than 1,000 Twitter followers. On Saturday, bloggers from coast to coast began posting on the story. By sunup Sunday, blogger Katja Presnal, who has 4,221 Twitter followers, had collected tweets (Twitter posts) from offended moms and turned them into a YouTube video that has now been viewed more than 50,000 times.
To its credit, J&J (which wrote the crisis-response handbook with its now legendary response to the Tylenol tampering episode in the early 80s) has handled the situation in textbook fashion – and once again offered a template for other companies to follow.
First of all, the fact that J&J has already suspended the ad campaign demonstrates that it was watching the social media space – and Twitter in particular – for mentions of its marquee brands. This should now be standard operating procedure across Corporate America. Tools such as TweetBeep, Twist, and Twinfluence can keep companies ahead of the game on Twitter. And sites such as Technorati can help companies cover other realms within the blogosphere as well.
Second, J&J went beyond simply issuing an apology. Kathy Widmer, the VP of Marketing at McNeil Consumer Healthcare, which handles the Motrin brand, immediately began connecting with angry bloggers via e-mail. And by engaging the blogging community, she made allies of those that had been lobbing darts at the Motrin brand just hours before. In fact, blogger Amy Gates even posted a personal note from Widmer on her blog, Crunchy Domestic Goddess.
By watching the blogosphere and joining the online conversation, J&J has once again set the gold standard in crisis response. Now that social media has officially arrived, we should all be paying close attention.
Gene Grabowski, Senior Vice President of Levick Strategic Communications and manager of the firm’s Crisis, Litigation, Liability, and Recall Practice Group, is a distinguished crisis communications counselor who leads high-profile accounts for major law firms, Fortune 500 companies, trade associations, and government agencies. For his work during the spinach E. coli crisis, the industry-wide pet food recalls, and the lead paint toy recalls, Mr. Grabowski was honored by PRNews as their Crisis Manager of the Year for 2007.
