Motrin had a well-intended concept, but execution was poor and understandably can be found offensive by mothers. Mom-bloggers told them so in no uncertain terms. The difference here, from what has happened to offensive marketing messages in the past, is that the event was public, was collaborated upon, and spread rapidly. Motrin was embarrassed and retreated rapidly.

Back to my point about ‘thanking’ the mom-bloggers. Motrin responded by pulling the ads and canceling several planned media expenditures which could have potentially offended hundreds of thousands of more mothers! This could have been much worse and in a world without twitter and blogs, they would have never known. A large amount of budget and brand value was saved.

Now Motrin is part of the social media conversation. They weren’t before, and now have the opportunity for a do-over. I’ll bet it goes much better next time. Surely, they have learned a great deal, as we all have. Thank you mom-bloggers.

Let me read a quote, “The grouping of consumers into these like-minded segments doesn’t mean that they are like-behaved. The underlying trouble is that most psychographic studies are starting at the wrong end of the stick. Where they ought to begin their segmenting is on a behavioral basis with conduct that relates to actually buying the brand in that category.”

There are examples of this everywhere and pervasive in our language. A print magazine created a new label, hybrid mom. And there are many more. “Helicopter mom”, “Wired mom”, “Boomer mom”, “Gen Y mom”. I can go on. You get the point. The curious thing is, I’ve yet to meet a mom who describers herself with one of these labels.

Society is more complex and diverse than it has ever been. Paying attention to behaviors and attitudes, and minimizing segmentation labels makes more sense.