Think Humongous

The Motrin Momalogues: What did Motrin miss?

UPDATE: Kathy Widmer, VP of Marketing - Pain, Pediatrics, GI, Specialty for McNeil Consumer Healthcare just responded. Her email is posted here.

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Today I’ve been watching a brand that is tried and true get put through the court of public opinion. Oh, Motrin, how did this happen? As a mother, I’m irritated by your Momalogue videos. As a lifelong marketer I feel for you and your ad team.  

So what went wrong? For me, Motrin missed in three key areas:

 

Motrin underestimated my personal values: Despite a culture that may trend toward appreciating cynicism, sarcasm and irreverence (think Saturday Night Live election coverage) for many mothers having a baby instills a new found sense of sacredness and selfless sacrifice. Motherhood redefines love. Sanctity, selflessness and love are values that trump cynicism, sarcasm and irreverence which make up the creative basis for the Momalogues.

 

Motrin did not earn the right to assume a personal relationship with me: While moms can laugh with each other as women who have shared experiences, Motrin the corporation is not in a position to assume that role. The Motrin website says “The MOTRIN Brand wants you to know we feel your pain.” A brand cannot feel my pain. And it is even more unbelievable because the  brand is engaged in contrived sarcastic monologue about how I tote my baby. The first rule of empathizing with a woman; never say, “Oh, I know how you feel.” Especially if you are a corporation talking.

 

Motrin went half-way on the Momalogue execution: I’m in marketing and there are usually two reasons you don’t use on camera talent. It’s too expensive, and if the campaign is global, it’s too expensive to translate. The voice over and animated words make the ads even more impersonal for a topic that is highly personal. If those commercials were delivered in a dialogue by real women, and perhaps a comedian who was a new mother, with a few copy changes they might have passed. But in this execution? No way.

 

The lesson? When it comes to motherhood, and especially if you’re going to claim to know my pain, you better go for the aspirational values. As a Mom I will believe in the people and companies that remind me to take care of myself so that I can give the best to my children and family.

 

(Get a list of blogger comments about this here.)

Scour - Social Search with Benefits

I’ve been using a new social search engine called Scour for my searches today.

Scour aggregates content from Google, Yahoo and MSN into one results page. It is considered a “social search engine” which means it integrates algorithm driven technology with the user community’s input to increase the relevancy of the results. In this case, Scour takes the user contributed ratings and comments and adds them to the search results. People who use Scour get points for each search, as well as for leaving comments and ratings.

Registration was quick and easy with only a few fields of information required to get started. I could have chosen to add a bunch of friends and get points from their usage in a sort of network marketing, be then ambassador way. I’ll leave that to a starving college student.

When you search, you can choose to see the Scour results or Google, Yahoo or MSN’s results. If you have preference for which search engine results to display, you’re only a click away.

The user interface is very simple and follows all the normal search conventions. I liked the way the comments and rating features were integrated onto the search results page. It made it easy to remember to leave a comment and rate the content. (Because, you know, those are worth more points!)

Speaking of points, here’s how you earn them:

• Search – 1 point
• Vote – 2 points          
• Comment – 3 points
• Friend Referral – 25% of each friend’s points

Beside the points, what are the benefits?

Because social search leverages human judgment to determine relevance and rankings, it should yield more current and more relevant results. However, I’ve got to believe that’s somewhat offset by the fact that there are so many unique searches conducted it would take a long time for comments and rating to really impact results. During the time I searched today, I didn’t run into anyone else’s comments. But then, it just launched.

Scour is an interesting concept – particularly for people who like watching points accrue. I guess if you’re getting the same results you’d get on Google, Yahoo or MSN, but potentially earning a Visa gift card, why not? It will be interesting to see if it gains wide-spread adoption and among what demographic. After a normal day of search engine use, I’ve earned about 90 points toward the 6,500 I need to get a $25 Visa gift card. Just 73 days of searching left!

You can check out how Scour works here:

Hello Moto

Welcome to the Twitterverse.

@MotoDeals (Motorola) joined @DellOutlet, @JetBlue and several other companies figuring out how social messaging fits into their integrated marketing, brand, commerce and customer relationship initiatives.

It’s been interesting watching different companies adopt social messaging. The best have:

• Honored that it is a conversation and that it is as important to listen as it is to promote
• Balanced promotional messaging with community oriented content by providing a peek into the human side of their company
• Kept it real – no corporate B.S.
• Regulated the number of their messages – not too many, and not too few
• Acknowledged their followers and found fun ways to engage them

Are you a company that’s used social messaging? Has it worked? Why or why not?

Twitter? Why would I do that?

Because you’re worth it.

After explaining Twitter to numerous friends and colleagues, “You can get quick answers, get directed to great information, find like-minded people and generally stay in touch … blah, blah, blah” I finally discovered, that there is a large segment of people who don’t think they have anything interesting to say. And it couldn’t be further from the truth.

The best way to get your colleagues, friends or family onboard the Twitter train? Tell them because you’re interested in what they have to say. You want to stay in touch and know what they’re up to. You want to know what they think. That they do indeed do things that would be interesting and fun to follow. And it’s fun, easy, and quick.

I’m still in awe of the all the great information I get from all the “information DJs” spinning URLs to great blogs, vlogs and websites. But the thing I appreciate the most is the funny repartee between fomer colleagues a couple states away, getting basic insights into my client’s lives and comfort in realizing that we’re not all as different as we think.

Why Twitter? Because there are people who care about you, what you think, and what you’re doing.

Summize - Bringing Insight to Social Networking

Twitter is great. Summize is awesome.

Summize takes all the posts from Twitter and makes them searchable. Try these searches and see what information you can glean:

• Enter the name of a company or product and see what the vocal minority are saying (for example, try Microsoft, Apple, Blackberry)
• Enter the name of people who Twitter (try some of my Twitter Peeps: @liamorgan, @guykawasaki, @marobella, or @e_winters) and see what you find.
• Enter the name of an event (for example, Microsoft Partner Conference, NECC) and find out the hot topics and where to find event blogs
• Search for topics that interest you, and you'll find like-minded people to follow on Twitter

To get a peek at the role that all this micro-blogging will play in the future of search, check out Summize Labs sentiment ratings. Check out the sentiment of a brand or product and see what the latest posts reveal. While this has a way to go, imagine a day when you search for company, product or service and can see the latest "consumer reports" and can immediately tap into people who can tell you their about their direct experience with a product.