The tweets range from goofy to outright hilarious, but are always entertaining. Let’s take a look at a few of the best, shall we?

A bumpy start:

On ancient lexicons:

The intensity of battle:

Stealing is bad:

Politics:

Losing direction:

Keep following @SkyrimMom for all the best updates from the best Skyrim player.

1. The stork delivers search
2. Moms become black belts in search
3. Search is Mom’s GPS to Store
4. Search is Mom’s back up brain.

"These truths reveal to marketers that motherhood creates a unique search window during which a valuable connection can be made," says Jenny Liu on the Google CPG blog. "To make sure that messaging is getting through to Moms, marketers need to make sure they appear prominently on the first page of results when Moms enter both broad and specific queries into a Search Engine."

So how did Google and BabyCenter arrive at the "four truths"? Let’s look at some of the stats from the report.

For one, mothers conduct nearly twice as many searches as non-mothers. According to the findings, before becoming a Mother, participants averaged 11 searches per week, and mothers averaged 21 searches per week. Searching is actually the number one activity conducted by Moms online (even more than email).

According to the study, 3 out of 4 Moms believe that they have become better at searching compared to a year ago. Over a third of moms don’t make it past the top section of the first page of search results. Over half use full sentence queries to get more specific results.

The study also found that moms typically use search engines throughout their purchase decision making process. Half of those surveyed use search during the awareness, familiarity and consideration stage. Expecting moms and moms with teens are more likely than the average mom to use search engines during the loyalty stage to stay in touch with a brand and keep up to date with new offers and products, the study suggests.

53% of moms say they have every expectation of seeing well-known brands highlighted within a sponsored link, and 59% of moms say they would click on a coupon noted in a sponsored search result. Another 55% of moms can link a purchase in a physical store back to a search conducted via a search engine.

Moms use search engines to find recipes, reviews of products and services and finding coupons and deals. According to Google, 56% of moms say they would give up high heeled shoes for search, and 53% would give up lipstick. 
 

Related Articles:

> Moms Are Fans Of Facebook And Twitter

> Does an Organic Search Presence Help Paid Result Performance?

> Social Media Will Not Replace Search

Women with children at home are more likely to use Facebook (60.3%), MySpace (42.4%) and Twitter (16.5%) than average adults (50.2%, 34.4%, 15%, respectively), according to the survey. Additionally, 15.3 percent maintain their own blog.

Mike Gatti, NRF

"Retailers who aren’t engaging customers through social media could be missing the boat," said Mike Gatti, Executive Director for RAMA.

"Twitter, Facebook and blogs are becoming increasingly popular with moms as they search for coupons or deals and keep in touch with loved ones. The web provides efficient, convenient ways for brands to stay in front of their most loyal shoppers and attract new ones." 

On a scale of one to five, when asked what types of promotions most influence their purchase, product samples in the store (3.8), product samples delivered to home (3.6), loyalty cards (3.5), and special displays (3.4) rank as their favorites.

The majority (93.6%) of mothers regularly or occasionally seek the advice of others before buying a service or a product, while 97.2 percent said they offer advice to others about products or services they purchased.

"Quite frankly, moms like to talk," said Phil Rist, Executive Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, BIGresearch.

"Whether they’re having coffee with a friend or updating their Facebook status, these women are eager and willing to share shopping experiences, both good and bad."

As I expected, Motrin site saw a huge increase in traffic on its site. According to Compete Pro Motrin’s site saw a 10X increase in its Daily Reach on the Web, jumping from .002% to .02% in one day. That is a huge. An ad without a controversy would have not generated that kind of traffic. Motrin should send a big thank you and some motrins to #motrinmoms , a twitter group that started this whole controversy.

Source: Compete Pro

Note: 15th evening is when the ad went live and by 17th evening they pulled the ad and posted an apology.

#motrinmoms, you were successful too because you got the ad pulled out and got an apology. Now go take some motrin to ease the pain caused by this ad, don’t forget to print a coupon at Motrin.

Comments

During a 10-day period, a groundswell of commentary and opinion about Kryptonite locks spread from enthusiasts talking on bike forums to the mainstream media, to a product recall that ultimately cost parent Ingersoll Rand $10 million.

CNN Money has a good summary and created the graph that shows what happened in such a short time (click to see larger size).

What’s not factored into that dollar figure is the cost to reputation.

Wind forward four years to this past weekend and an online storm that has erupted over Motrin, an over-the-counter painkiller sold in the USA, and an advertising video produced by the brand owner  McNeil that very quickly offended some mothers.

The storm of protest that has embraced so many different online communication channels – from blogs to video and especially to social networking micro-channels like Twitter – has already prompted an apology from McNeil on the Motrin website and the withdrawal of the video from that website.

And all this has happened in less than 48 hours.

So what’s this all about? Well, take a look for yourself –  the pulled video is on YouTube and plenty of other places (including links from blog posts like this one).

What’s most compelling to me isn’t the video that McNeil produced. It’s not especially remarkable: it’s a good example of a marketing message in audio-visual form, nicely produced and quite watchable.

What’s really compelling is the content angry mothers have created themselves, using tools and channels that largely weren’t around four years ago – YouTube, for instance, and definitely Twitter – but today are accessible and easy to use by anyone with an internet connection.

It’s what we tend to label today with the impersonal phrase “ user-generated content.”

For instance, check this video out:

I don’t know about you but I can’t help but feel almost overwhelmed by the emotion expressed in these images and the words shown in the various Twitter messages.

And look at what you get if you do a Google search on the brand name “motrin” as I did early today.

The first result is a link to a Google News page where this story has already made the mainstream media across the US and beyond.

You’d expect the brand website to be the first result in a Google search – and I’m sure it was before this storm broke out.

Remember Kryptonite’s 10 days? This has happened for Motrin in less than 2 days.

As with Kryptonite, this eruption of critical opinion hasn’t been formally organized: it’s happened spontaneously, enabled by technology that gives you the means to very quickly and easily articulate and share an opinion on a scale and with a speed that was unimaginable as recently as even a decade ago. Clay Shirky would be proud.

It’s the scale and speed that still takes many people in the PR business by surprise, used as we still generally are to things developing at a more leisurely pace (let’s call it “analogue speed”) attuned to the traditional news-gathering and reporting cycles of traditional print and broadcast media.

Those days are gone. We no longer have that luxury. As communicators, we must enable our attention all day every single day. And that includes the weekends, something it seems the Motrin communicators weren’t doing.

Of the many blog posts published by communicators and pundits with opinions, one of the best I’ve seen comes from Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang and lessons learned:

• Always test your campaign with a small segment first
• Always have staff on hand to be prepared to respond during the weekend
• Don’t launch a campaign right before the weekend unless you’re prepared to respond
• The participants have the power, so participate
• For better or for worse, more influencers are talking about Motrin than ever before

I’d add one in the middle:

• Ask yourself: what is our plan of action if a viral effect develops around our brand/product/service, especially out of our normal business hours?

But it’s the last two of Jeremiah’s bullet points that are especially important.

What these angry mums represent – and as this is America we’re talking about, it’s ‘moms’ of course; more specifically, MotrinMoms – is an enormous self-organized focus group, providing the brand owner with amazing feedback on their product.

My podcasting partner Shel Holtz and I discussed this Motrin storm in yesterday’s FIR #398 podcast. We’d love to know your opinion about this kerfuffle so do contribute a comment after you’ve listened to the show.

Meanwhile, I hope McNeil are paying very close attention to all the commentary out there. They’ve already apologized. Now they can grasp a golden opportunity to listen and engage.

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