Monday was a crazy day .. I had no idea my YouTube video Motrin Makes Moms Mad would get such a response and the “Motrin Moms” story would be all over. Over 37,000 people have seen the video. Talk about going viral.
Just between you and me, this all freaks me out.
I didn’t know the video would make so many people mad. I don’t get it. Moms simply said their opinions, voiced their feelings, and saying someone’s feelings are wrong is as smart as saying it’s wrong to like tuna fish or wearing blue clothes is stupid.
People have also raised a question, why Motrin ad? Why moms collectively raised their voices over an ad, isn’t that irrelevant? That there are much more important issues that we could join our forces with.
I agree 100%, there are so many issues that should be talked about.
And most of us write about important issues all the time, like fighting against poverty, reminding people to vote, raising awareness of autism.. just to name a few.
What sort of boils me is that the same people who question if this is the “right” issue to raise a voice and say a collective opinion of are using their own voices to bash babywearing moms or (fellow) mommy bloggers or even me personally, not raising awareness to the issues that they think are important.
Some people’s small issues are other people’s big issues. If we can’t get small things accomplished, how we can expect to get bigger ones to get accomplished? I could go on.
Amy at Crunchy Domestic Goddess put it in to words so well, so I really wish you will go to read her blog post. One of the things she says:
“there are power in numbers and that it’s important to stand up for the things you believe in, no matter how small they may seem”, and I agree. However much this may be ridiculed by media, moms’ voices were heard and responded.
Another blogger, who wrote a great blog post yesterday is Erin, Queen of Spain – there might be little chewing to do to understand fully what she means, but I agree with her too. “Right or wrong, the rest of the web is now rolling its eyes, again at our community. Words like ‘mob’ and ‘rookies’ and ‘divas’ are flying around and we’re not being taken seriously.” We should fix that, right?
I would also like to say a word about Motrin.
They issued an apology and took the ad down. It took them less than 24 hours after moms started asking them to drop the ad. It was Sunday. The company is not using social media. I know we want instant gratification, but 24 hour response time and listening moms’ opinions is pretty impressive in corporate America in fact.
They cared enough to take the ad down. There were still a lot of moms who said there is nothing wrong with the ad – but Motrin still valued those moms who it offended.
THANK YOU MOTRIN FOR LISTENING.
You know, I read some bad things written about me yesterday, some people even blamed I started the whole uproar (I didn’t, I just documented it), or I was a mom with too much time in her hands or a nanny. I felt like I wanted to go under covers and sulk. I had my moments… I was even wishing I hadn’t done the video. I may be wrong, but the people at Motrin may feel the same way. They might want to sulk too.
But I also got thank you notes from moms and even from the Babywearing International for making the video and helping moms to get their voices out. It felt really good. Now I can’t wait to do something else good – will you join me?
Maybe we should all thank Motrin for listening to us – they did a mistake, they are trying to fix it. It was only an ad, yes it hurt many people, but still – it was only an ad. I’m just thinking that what if we now say “Thank you Motrin for listening” – who knows, maybe they will be in with us to do something truly good? Any ideas what that could be?
