Everyone in social media seems to be talking about Motrin this morning.  For those of you who aren’t up on what happened here’s a brief recap filtered through my admittedly skewed perspective.  Motrin released this ad, and some of the moms at whom it was directed found it offensive.  Some of those moms use Twitter so they started to express their views online, which allowed more moms the opportunity to be offended. Eventually apologies were issued and apparently the ad was pulled (even though it’s on YouTube).

It’s hard to tell how many people viewing the ad found it offensive.  What we can see is the magnifying power of social media.  Particularly social media sites that are tracked by offline media.  What starts off as a small number of people magnifies into a large PR problem.

I’m a creative, not a social media expert (I’m actually curious how many people involved in this opinion storm are social media marketers).  I have my own take on what happened here.

A couple of years ago a phenomenal bit of typographic animation started getting passed around the design world.  It’s a particularly explitive filled scene from Pulp Fiction redone entirely in text (’SAY WHAT AGAIN!’ - if you aren’t offended by language, see the piece here).  It started a small animation trend, what I would consider a healthy invigoration of interest in typography, and I’d guess it is a direct source of inspiration for the Motrin ad.

This is a creative problem.  Creative decisions, like any other decision in business, should be driven by goals.  Creative does not drive strategy, it’s the other way around, and this looks suspiciously like an example of a mismatched creative concept.  The animation of the text requires snappy dialogue, a clever back and forth, and reads as diminishing the concerns of mothers.  I have no doubt the the Motrin folks think their product can help moms, and I’m sure they have the research to prove it, but there is a creative disconnect between their message and their delivery.