If you visit Taxi-nyc.com you won't find anything to clue you in that they are ground zero of one of the most breathtaking examples of how the balance of power between consumers and corporate America has shifted--thanks to social media.

No mea culpa. No apologies. No witty, pithy or even snarky promise of lessons learned.

Taxi-NYC is the agency that created the ill-fated Motrin Ad Campaign that so offended, so outraged its target audience--babywearing moms -- that there was a stampede to boycott the product. Not exactly the goal of most advertising campaigns. Since MOM 101is in advertising, her approach to blogging about the issue was to analyze why it was so offensive.

I'm actually feeling Motrin's own pain right now. They have an awesome
brand, a tried-and-true product, and a very smart idea at its core:
Motrin works on the pain that only mothers understand.

What the campaign is missing is the love.

On Monday, November 24, 2008, a week after Motrin pulled the ad and apologized for it, I contacted Lisa Sanders, Taxi-NYC's Director of Corporate Communications to see if the agency would share their lessons learned.

She demurred with a "No comment." Sanders indicated that my request would be forwarded to J&J but she didn't spend any time asking exactly what my request was.

For an entire week, a firestorm swirled around the Motrin babywearing ad. J&J responded swiftly by taking down the ad and issuing an apology. But that doesn't answer the question, How did the ad get created and approved in the first place?

While crisis communication standards may advise that the ad agency hunker down and wait for the storm to pass,that is advice for an era past,---an era where social media didn't exist.

No one doubts the sincerity of J&J's apology. But I wasn't contacting the ad agency about an apology. I wanted to know what they learned from this experience and how they might change their creative process going forward. I wanted to know what advice they might give other agencies who find themselves in the center of a social media backlash.

But no one is talking, quite yet. This is not a question that Johnson & Johnson can answer. This is a question for the advertising agency and having a zipped lip is not helping matters.

The Motrin/babywearing Ad and the lightening swift reaction of bloggers and twitterers is an important story. BlogHers were all over it.

From Amy Gates at Crunchy Domestic Goddess to Don Mills Diva who asks, Chill Pill Anyone? and Chris MomathonBlog.com and RenaissanceTrophyMom who shares " Hell Hath No Fury Like a Blogging Mom On Twitter and YouTube,"and Zchamu who writes "Motringate: The ad wasn't the issue. Motrin just didn't listen."

As BlogHer Chief Operating Officer Elisa Camahort said when I asked her about the situation,

"This was an incredibly impressive display of the power social media holds for both customers *and* companies. Women raised their voices individually, then together, to articulate their intense feelings about an ad. And the company was able to listen to those voices, assess the situation and take direct and immediate action. All in 48 hours over a weekend! I have never seen anything like it in my life!"

 

Last Sunday, Joyce Schwarz who blogs at Hollywood2020.net decided to focus on the creators of the spot. She learned that Taxi just won the $18 million account around August. That means the agency had about 8 weeks to research, develop and create the ad campaign.

Schwartz also was able to reach the agency's Director of Corporate Communications who at the time -- Monday morning-- indicated she had no idea that anyone on Twitter was talking about the spot.

Joyce spent the next 10 minutes updating Sanders about the controversy as a professional courtesy and explaining what was happening on Twitter.com --2000 posts.

Schwarz walked Lisa Sanders through the posts online

She asked when Schwarz needed a comment and Joyce said she was posting the blog about this call right now. Schwarz said as soon as possible.

At 12:25 p.m PST Sanders called Schwarz back and on the record said, "We’re doing our research on this."

While much of the coverage of the Motrin debacle focused on the swiftness and groundswell of consumer reaction, there are some advertising experts that question whether Motrin should have removed the spot.

Early in my marketing career, a seasoned advertising executive shared a piece of wisdom that to this day I carry into every presentation I make.

He said, "regardless of how brilliant your work is, 15% of the population is going to hate it." The question is, if that 15% is happens to have a louder voice, is that the voice that advertisers should listen to?

Catherine P. Taylor opines on the Social Media Insider whether the controversy will kill advertising creativity and recommends that perhaps companies should learn not to listen to the loudest consumers.

But my question of the day[is] about how suffering this outcry will affect advertising for Motrin, and by extension, advertising creativity itself. For that, the cure is much harder. Can we expect. Johnson & Johnson to be skittish the next time a well-meaning creative director presents something somewhat edgy to the client? Yes. Can we expect said idea, even if it makes it out of the conference room, to be focus-grouped to death before it is unleashed to the vocal masses? Yes. And are other advertisers watching the Motrin drama unfold and quaking just a little about whether the campaign they just approved has the ability to incite a riot? Sure.

The Ontario Emperor suggests this could be a brilliant advertising strategy,

..based upon the reaction, perhaps this is a brilliant strategy on Motrin's part to capture the audience who is NOT moms - namely, single men, single women, gay couples who haven't adopted, childless heterosexuals. If so, Motrin has succeeded beyond its wildest expectations.

Beth Harte of The Harte of Marketing suggests that Motrin acted too quickly in taking down the ad.

My thoughts, pure and simple, for what they’re worth…

 

• Yes, listen to your audience (and I am sure you do). But, when they come swarming out of nowhere like Africanized bees, question the motives before making any moves.
• Don’t use Twitter for primary research. While I respect Peter Shankman, I don’t agree with that bit of advice. Twitter is too limited, too slanted and too untested for research. It’s good for a pulse check, agreed.
• Use this as a learning lesson; we all will be joining you.

And Ani Batra ,who blogs about web analytics ,says the Motrin Ad may end up be a success when it comes to the bottom line.

1. Change in Motrin Sales – This will really tell us if the ad and this backlash had any negative (or positive) impact in Motrin or not. As I asked above, was the backlash against Motrin, or just against the ad? If it was the ad then they apologized and took the ad away. The product “Motrin” did not have any negatives attached to it. As mentioned above, a lot of people might have to gone to the site. If you look on Motrin’s site there is a link on the top called “Special Offers”. You click on that link and get a coupon with the option to forward the page to a friend. I am sure that this increase in traffic would have resulted in an increase in coupons being printed and forwarded to a friend. This in return will possibly drive more sales. This seems like a success for Motrin.

Meanwhile it would be great if Taxi-NYC would be willing to talk to bloggers about their process for creating the ad.

It could go a long way if they were transparent and shared with the people they offended what their intentions really were and how things went terribly wrong.

Waiting for the controversy to disappear may have been a strategy Don Draper could use in the 60s but today, the good folks at Taxi-NYC should come out of hiding.

Imagine what kind of ad they could create if they had a conversation with the people they offended.

But as I learned from Mom 101's post, the copywriter is not with the agency anymore.

One more update, via a friend at the ad agency: The copywriter is no longer with the agency.

She's on maternity leave.

Wow.

Elana blogs about business culture at FunnyBusiness.

Image credit: Beth Harte, The Harte of Marketing