I’ve been say­ing a lot lately how social media basi­cally helps mar­ket­ing suc­ceed or fail faster. In a timely tes­ta­ment, a Motrin cam­paign is giv­ing us a les­son in what hap­pens when you fail.

The Motrin site, which was taken down at about 9:20pm Sun­day night, tar­gets new moms suf­fer­ing from car­ry­ing their new­borns in slings and such. It even offended me. Partly because I’ve been an equal par­tic­i­pant in the behav­iour char­ac­terised in the ad. And partly because it’s weak creative–not Taxi’s finest hour.

• It shows the strat­egy instead of com­ing up with an insight
• The insin­u­a­tions are ignorant–‘babywearing’ is in fash­ion? What did ancient cul­tures around the world use for their baby-carrier pain in the days before Motrin? 
• It insults moms (and dads) who of course see baby car­ri­ers as lib­er­at­ing because they help them get out 

I’ll let you get the story of how this con­ver­sa­tion spread at Mash­able, which went live as I was typ­ing this.