Twitter Takes Down Moms & Motrin

Twitter has come of age in impacting a marketing campaign. Check out two interesting articles -- Ad Age: "How Twittering Critics Brought Down Motrin Mom Campaign" and New York Times: "Moms and Motrin."

The two articles show how an edgy campaign can backfire.

Here's how the Times' Lisa Belkin covered it:

By Sunday afternoon a few bloggers and tweeters had gotten the ad agency that created the ad on the phone, to find they didn’t know a lot about Twitter and didn’t seem to have a clue that there was so much anger piling up online.

One thing we're suggesting to clients is that you need to have an online presence before a crisis happens. It takes time to build up credibility and to get engaged in conversations. You can't flick a switch, and expect to have a conversation on Twitter or Facebook. You need to consider starting now, for when you need the credibility later.