It’s about just over a week since Motrin-gate. Yes, it’s officially a “gate.” The dust has settled and here’s where we’re at.

Motrin issued an apology; I’m not surprised. The full text of the apology is:

Nov 20th

So…it’s been almost 4 days since I apologized here for our Motrin advertising. What an unbelievable 4 days it’s been. Believe me when I say we’ve been taking our own headache medicine here lately!
Btw – if you’re confused by this – we removed our Motrin ad campaign from the marketplace on Sunday because we realized through your feedback that we had missed the mark and insulted many moms. We didn’t mean to…but we did. We’ve been able to get most of the ads out of circulation, but those in magazines will, unfortunately, be out there for a while.

We are listening to you, and we know that’s the best place to start as we move ahead. More to come on that.

In the end, we have been reminded of age-old lessons that are tried and true:

When you make a mistake – own up to it, and say you’re sorry.

Learn from that mistake.

That’s all… for now.

Sincerely,

Kathy Widmer
VP Marketing
McNeil Consumer Healthcare

The next thing to come will undoubtedly be an official mommy council/panel.

AdAge does a great job of chronicling the situation here.  The article will of course be taken shortly, so I’ll give you the best bits here.

Meanwhile, even some mommy bloggers saw signs the whole episode had hurt their community more than helped it. “Right or wrong, the rest of the web is now rolling its eyes, again, at our community,” Erin Kotecki Vest said on Nov. 17 at QueenofSpainBlog.com. “I’ll be honest, they are right. What happened this weekend went from smart, powerful activism to Palin-rally lynch mob.”

“We listened extensively to moms, the insights about their lives, and how their pain impacts them,” Ms. Presnal said, reading from Ms. Widmer’s e-mail. She continued from the e-mail: “I think where this went wrong was the creative expression we used. … The tone was intended to be real and lighthearted, but it came off as irreverent. … We did conduct focus groups with moms. But truthfully they probably weren’t extensive enough to uncover this.”

In fact, most online buzz about Motrin-gate was either positive or neutral in tone toward J&J and the ads, according to analyses by Tom Martin, president of Zehnder Communications, New Orleans, and Lexalytics.

Meanwhile, the core group behind the Twitter storm numbered in the low four figures. A Google search on Monday indicated around 4,000 tweets on Twitter, and analyses by Mr. Martin using Radian6 data and by Lexalytics suggested around 1,500 tweets involving around 1,000 individuals using the #motrinmoms hash tag.

Can you believe the insanity of this situation? Can you believe the power the internet and social media has?

There are several key takeaways for me.

1. You can’t please everyone.  There will be critics of the work you do and they are often the people who scream the loudest.
2. Have a disaster plan ready to launch should the need arise.
3. Keep site of the big picture; was yanking all the work and incurring the expenses to do so really worth it to appease a sliver of a fraction of your audience?  I can’t answer that one for Motrin; only they know the answer.
4. Every company should have someone (internal or external) who is responsible for all things social media.  If Ford can do it, so can everyone else.

This was a classic tempest in a teacup situation that 5 years ago we’d have never known about. However, we operate in a different world right now. With internet penetration in the U.S. above 90% of all households, nearly everyone is connected. The web provides a mechanism for things to accelerate quickly. In general I believe we need to be actively listening, monitoring, and communicating. I think Motrin did a great job of doing the listening and the communicating, but did a poor job at the monitoring. Had they monitored better they might have been able to temper the situation. The key word is “might.” Personally, I think that when people have an axe to grind, their going to grind that axe into the ground.

The one thing I do hope is that marketers don’t look upon this situation as a reason not to invest in social media. This was only 1 example of social media that backfired. There are so many GREAT examples of companies that have successfully invested in social media. Your company could be next.