This is one of those thing’s that causes one to scream, “Oh for fuck’s sake!” Or better yet, “Jesus, fucking Christ!” Why the harsh language? Because, yet again, America has lost its sense of humor and has gotten its underwear up its crack over an innocuous Motrin ad which pokes fun at babywearing. For the uninformed, babywearing (yes, there’s an actual Babywearing week) is the art of carrying your child in a sling. You’ve seen plenty of moms and dads with a child slung around their bodies as if the baby were yet another MacBook Pro.
In a new commercial, Motrin decided to help, albeit in an overly snarky fashion, those suffering back pain due to babywearing. After all, as the ad says, “these things” are heavy. But it’s done because it “totally makes me look like an official mom,” And who doesn’t want to look like an official mom these days? What with Brooke Shields advocating pregnancy just to get a VW minivan and babies crawling around the conference room floors of office across the country, momhood is hot! And Motrin wants a piece of smokin’ hot MILF’y goodness.
Alas, the party didn’t last long. Predictably, Twitter is in an uproar. Predictably, someone made a protest video. Predictably, Motrin has caved and issued an apology (from McNeil Consumer Healthcare VP of Marketing Kathy Widmer). Predictably, Motrin has pulled the ad from their website. In fact, their entire site is/was down for a while.
Maybe we all just need to relax and…hmm…go Motoring.
More seriously, David Armano has some good advice for companies which find themselves in this predicament and how they can quickly react.
UPDATE: As of mid-day Monday, the Motrin site is back up and it contains an apology from VP of Marketing Kathy Widmer. It’s not clear why the site was down for so long.
