A recent article in the Wall Street Journal shows the perils, real or imagined, of product flaws in this emerging age of social media. Proctor Gamble is a highly admired company especially for its careful stewardship of its many premier brands. Can it be that any American mother, in a word association game, would not tell you that Pampers equates to diapers?

Imagine the horror of the brand managers for Pampers when Roshana Shah opened a Facebook site to campaign against PG’s recent market launch of Dry Max diapers. As the WSJ article states, this is not the only site to open up in complaint of the new design. In reading some of the recent posts, there are a lot of very unhappy moms out there. PG is fighting back in what may be a risky approach with some discrediting of the posters and leaders of this movement. Will it work? Time will tell.

But PG is pursuing some very positive approaches as well. They are not unaware of the power of social media. Before the product launch, PG developed a network of Mommy bloggers to sample and test their new design. Seems like a pretty savvy move to me. They also have their own Facebook page for Pampers that states its mission as “Caring for Babies’ Happy, Healthy Development.” The site is filled with tributes and stories of Motherhood. PG also allows posters to complain and many complaints as well as supportive posts are to be found on the site. It is really amazing. It is also a rich source of data. But how to sort through it all and make sense of it?

Continue reading “Don’t mess with Mom, especially if she is on Facebook”

Article source: http://www.biblogs.com/2010/05/25/don%E2%80%99t-mess-with-mom-especially-if-she-is-on-facebook/