J&J Triggers Mommy War With Motrin 'Anti-Baby Sling' Ad

A Johnson & Johnson TV commercial for Motrin has triggered an avalanche of hate from new moms. The offending ad, which you can see here (and below), pokes fun at moms who carry babies in slings by suggesting that it is likely to make your neck and back ache more (and you should therefore take Motrin).

Baby-slinging moms turn out to be a powerful internet force, however, and in a matter of hours dozens of mom-blogs had poured out a torrent of anger at J&J. The company has withdrawn the ad and produced a statement of apology.

To drive its point home, the ad uses a slightly sarcastic tone to suggest that slings are a fad that is merely “in fashion”:

I mean in theory it’s a great idea … who knows what else they’ve come up with … supposedly it’s a real bonding experience … These things put a ton of strain on your back your neck your shoulder … plus it totally makes me look like an official mom.

The ad suggests that moms who “wear” their babies cry more than those who don’t.

Most blogs have gotten obsessed with the anti-Motrin Twitter stream that was started.

But it’s worth picking apart this controversy a little further. From a business point of view, this is a rare misstep for J&J, which is famed for the savvy with which it markets to moms and families. The company has spent billions securing its brand in that space, so much so that with marks like Baby.com and Johnson’s Baby Oil, the concept of “baby” and J&J almost toddle hand-in-hand.

It’s not a unique misstep, however. Remember the “Girl Scout drug dealers” fiasco of a couple of years ago? (That was the fundraising effort in which J&J wanted girls scouts to go door-to-door selling painkillers.) Like the Motrin baby slings ad, that effort was also killed almost as soon as the media got a whiff of it.

On the other hand, look at it from the point of view of the company. Their Motrin team is in the business of trying to alleviate pain. Baby slings are certainly a new trend (no one wore them 20 years ago). And dangling a baby from your neck or shoulder is likely to cause back pain. The company was probably trying to persuade moms to couple Motrin with a little ergonomic common sense. Not everyone with kids found the ad infuriating. Check out this guy:

here’s the other thing I know from experience IT F$%@ING HURT MY BACK. It also hurt my wife’s back. We purchased an insanely expensive sling/ child back/ forward thing when our now 6 year old son was born. Between us I reckon it would have been lucky to have been used a dozen times because that’s how much it hurt both our backs.

Random conclusions: There are lots of health issues than can be tackled in drug ads, but polarizing constituents of mommies to make your point is probably not the smartest move you can make. Companies have to accept that their mistakes now occur in public. It’s a transparent world — get used to being seen living in it. This is a nine-day wonder. It will pass.