Znetlady: Modern Media

Advice to Motrin: Put the Ad Back Up and LEAD

Replace it maybe, but Motrin should have not been so quick to take it down. 

If you have no idea what I’m talking about – see my Harper’s Index style post on the dust up.  In a nutshell, Motrin released an ad that got lots of attention over the weekend while offending some in Motrin’s target market.

If I were advising Motrin, I would have advised them to keep it up, but to jump on the opportunity immediately to lead and manage. Turn it around on a dime into a conversation about 1) what was offensive (content or tone); 2) why; 3) are they addressing an issue for baby wearers correctly – but in the wrong way; 4) are there other issues they should be addressing; ….and here is the big one:

5) LEAD the vocalizers into solutions for Motrin and maybe ultmately into helping Motin shape a better campaign (which might be suitable for carrying forward into print and offline). 

Taking the ad down from the Motrin web site is meaningless from a practical standpoint – the ad is up on YouTube as are the inevitable response videos.  I downloaded a local copy to use in presentations. It’s out there. Taking it down doesn’t mean a thing.

Leave it up and do the postmortem together. Get out of crisis communications stress mode.   Manage and most importantly, lead your customer.  So much more value could be gained from that than taking it down could ever.

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester believes the conversation wasn’t so robust that it would adversely affect Motrin in searches.  I say that is short-sighted thinking (and a disappointing analysis to read from Forrester) - the equivalent of “we dodged a bullet.”  Motrin didn’t dodge a bullet, they angered some of their customers and, in the perception, betrayed a trust.

What is especially worth noting to all marketers is that the Motrin campaign is being characterized as a “social media campaign.”  But it wasn’t really intended to be.  It was "just" an ad on their web site.  But socialized media certainly turned it into a "social media campaign" - and really fast.

Original post:  http://freshtakes.typepad.com/enterprise_social_media/2008/11/advice-to-motri.html

Znetlady's Index: 11-16-08

In the spirit of Harper's Index

Motrin Mom's Edition: #motrinmoms  First 24 Hours

Number of hours for #motrinmons to reach #1 on Twitter on November 16:  1:56

Hours for the first response video to be uploaded to YouTube:  3

Views on YouTube for Motrin Makes Moms Mad: 2,507

Number of response videos to Motrin’s video ads on Youtube:  8

Video minutes recapping 1st hour of #motrinmoms twitter posts: 9:15

Number of AllTop’s “top mommy bloggers” who posted  about the ads:  9

Posts about Motrin’s ads tracked at New Old Moms Club:  55

Anti-Motrin stores set up on CafePress:  1

Number of anti-Motrin products offered:  6

Baby-wears Flickr Groups set up: 1

Google search results for motrin moms:  3,500

Screenshots of ad at Small Dots: 7

Number of posts with transcript of ad: 1

Taxi staff proactively monitoring Twitter:  0

Responses on J&J’s blog: 0

Value of  J&J’s Motrin and Children's Motrin advertising account to agency, Taxi:  $18 million

Hours until Motrin.com went offline: 20.5

Znetlady

Original post: http://freshtakes.typepad.com/enterprise_social_media/2008/11/znetladys-index.html

Have Tool. Will Visualize

Ooooh.  We love visualization.  It is, after all, one of the six mega trends* we encourage our clients to live by.   As you might expect, we spend a fair amount of time on ManyEyes. 

ManyEyes allows the entire Internet to upload all kinds of data and turn it into beautiful, elegant and sometimes surprisingly insightful pattern pictures.  Lots of different kinds of patterns available to you as well and all from our friends at IBM. ManyEyes goes one step beyond great visualizations turning them into social media through its rating and discussion features.  The home page at ManyEyes has an up-to-the-minute gallery of visualizations – check them out.

We encourage you to start thinking about how to visualize your stuff – make it more meaningful and you might even surprise yourself about the insight you might see inside your data.  So, to help you get your visualization ideas flowing, here are a few other favorite visualization tools.

Newsmap – visualizing the Google news aggregator.

Amaztype – a typographic visual search of Amazon 

We Feel Fine – a somewhat addictive set of visualizations of feelings from all over the web.

Have tool. Will visualize.

*all six mega trends are: connectivity, personalization, mobility, sharable media, visualization, virtualization.

Original Post: The Modohood: http://modohood.marcominteractive.com/2008/11/have-tool-will.html

Backchanneling MTV

MTV has clearly elevated the concept of socializing while watching television to an artfully modern parlor game. It’s called Backchannel. 

Here’s the nutshell.  Micro-blog funny or snarky comments in real time with others online while watching The Hills on MTV (you probably already do that). To play, log into a specialized MTV Backchannel game “chat room” while you are tuned into the tv show.  Viewers make comments (called tags) about what is happening in the show to the 100 other people or so in that room. Other people click on the comments floating around that they like - a la an arcade game.  Players get points as both a clicker and tagger with the goal of becoming a Backchannel superstar.  It is all timed and limited pretty ingeniously so the tagging and clicking isn’t overwhelming.  It’s way more compelling than it might sound, trust me.

The commenting goes on right through the commercials – yes, I hear the ad-people gears turning on the potential advertising metrics on that one…. Advertisers, are you ready to hear what people think of you?

Social media concepts personified.  MTV connects the audience to each other (one of our well-worn mantras here), and makes their TV shows interactive, more fun and socially powered. But just think about the insight MTV is gathering from the audience on the content of the show – not to mention a new value they can offer their advertisers.

MTV has mashed up TV with Twitter with gaming with social networking – they’ve done equally interesting things with virtual worlds, but that's another story.

I tell you. MTV are ones to follow (even if their programming may not always be).

Original Post: The Modohood: http://modohood.marcominteractive.com/2008/10/backchanneling.html

Goodbye, Mary: When Social Media Goes Campaign-y

This video is a beeeautiful illustration (satire) of why social media is not "a campaign." 

When you integrate social media you are “socializing” your media.  That means there is more than just “you” involved in it. It means there is some kind of  “we” in it.  It means a relationship (community) begins.  Why waste it?

credits:  video by Scott Blaszak

Original Post:  Enterprise Social Media: http://freshtakes.typepad.com/enterprise_social_media/2008/11/goodbye-mary-wh.html

Social Media Training 2009 Schedule`

Finally - a few days later than hoped - but we've posted the 2009 schedule for the Social Media Management™ series of social media training courses.  Registration opens December 1, 2008 for our '09 workshop courses.

Keep in mind these workshops are for those serious about learning to use, leverage, manage and strategize social media. These are not  for casual learning - you know, the 'sit-back-and-get-ideas' kind of gathering. These courses are for those who want to learn the inner workings of social media so they can apply it fluidly to many kinds of organizational solutions.    In other words, this is not painting-by-numbers but creating individual social media masterpieces. Well, you get the idea.  Come ready to work.

The Social Media Management Series™

• Social Media Basic Training: Web 2.0 Literacy, Social Media, Social Networks and the New Media Channels 
  Intensive one or two-day workshop
  (Web 2.0 Literacy Certificate of Completion)

• Monitoring and Analyzing the Social Media Conversation
  Intensive one-day workshop

• Building a Social Media Strategy
  Intensive two-day workshop

• Social Media Success Metrics and Methods
  Intensive one-day workshop

• Social Media Marketing Communications and Engagement
  Intensive one-day workshop

Registration for 2009 workshop courses opens December 1, 2008.

Original Post:  Enterprise Social Media: http://freshtakes.typepad.com/enterprise_social_media/2008/10/social-media--1.html