Universal Remote? Yes. Universal Studios? Yes. Universal Mom? No.

When we were at BlogHer last summer, Devra moderated the panel MommyBlogging: The Commercial Momosphere: Policies, Ethics and Outreach . During that discussion she made the point "there is no universal mom" and any marketing firm or pr campaign making that assumption would be finding themselves with a huge marketing misstep on their hands. Evidently the folks who came up with the latest Motrin ad campaign missed the session. Pity.

(For those wondering what the bruhaha is about, here is a roundup as to who's blogging about it.)
This particular headache isn't going to go away on its own. Our take on the situation? Mistakes happen. Motrin needs to do the right thing ; apologize, take the ad down and move on.*

What relieves us (heh, heh, we said "relieves") most of all is the ad campaign has not ignited mommy war rhetoric. Instead parents and non-parents are coming together with a "Yo, Team Motrin, you could have done far better and here's how..." So far we've been pleased that a majority of the online community has not used the ad campaign to diss each other on our parenting decisions and practices. Which easily could have happened. It could have gotten very ugly. It wasn't too long ago we saw a comment thread from an article about the Top 7 Mommy Guilt Trips morph into a vitriolic debate over breastfeeding. Yes. Really. And it was stomach churning. Thankfully it looks like we're not going to need an antacid, it's more likely we just need an ad pulled from circulation. Just pull the ad and chalk it up to "lessons learned." Move on.

If this Twitter-based example of grassroots-social media- inspired-parental unity were represented by one voice, we think it would sound a lot like Jon Lovitz yelling, "Get to know me!" and then maybe it would break out into song to shed more light on why Motrin gave us such a headache.



*Edited to Add at 11:41PM, Looks like the ad is coming down. Most excellent!

**After we wrote this post and Motrin pulled the ad and apologized, we started to read the feedback about the apology from the many sides of the situation. Responses to the apology have been mixed and varied among bloggers, news media, marketing, advertising and PR folks; some pleased, some not so pleased. Some understand, some are confused. Some happy, some angered. And some don't really give a crap anymore and just want to watch Top Chef tonight. Um, okay that last one would be Devra, because, well you know. Whether you decide to do something, let it go or watch escapist tv, we truly hope everyone will eventually get to a place where, as Aviva loves to say, "We all move forward with a renewed spirit of understanding."