Sack it, Motrin
By Jessica Hillyard - Nov 18th, 2008 at 9:00 amVia Broadsheet, this new Motrin ad targeting moms who tote around their babies in slings and carriers is causing a lot of, ahem, soreness in the feminist community. The ad does seem to have an implicit off-handedness to it. Or maybe it’s me. Take a peek for yourself:
The intent of the ad is to be in the right place, but the tone just doesn’t sit well. Moms have been targeted for women-related ailments for ages, but the emphasis here seems to be more fashion-related. It’s almost as if the “kid” the female voice refers to might as well be some fashion accessory.
It isn’t awful, and I commend Motrin for trying to address the specific needs of women. But Motrin went about this is the wrong way. Parenting is a sensitive topic, to be sure, and there are bound to be critics when it comes to pitching ideas to parents. But if a company seeks to market a product to women who want to bond with their babies, the last thing it should do is diminish the bond between mother and child with ads like this.
saw this all day yesterday….they REALLY pissed off the mommy bloggers
November 18th, 2008 at 11:25 amnow it’s been successfully crushed:
http://gawker.com/5091917/twitter-mom-power-innocuous-ads-successfully-banned
personally, this annoys the hell out of me. granted, i’m not a mother, but i think people are overreacting…seriously, aren’t there more important things for the female and parenting community to get up in arms about than an innocuous (however misguided) ad campaign? imagine if they focused their efforts on drawing attention to something like, oh, say, this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/18/child-hunger-in-us-rose-5_n_144521.html
November 18th, 2008 at 11:54 am