J&J’s Camp Baby: A Social Media Mistake or Social Media Opportunity?
April 14, 2008
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Today I ran across a Brandweek article that covered Johnson and Johnson’s latest social media attempt to reach and engage mom bloggers: a three day conference entitled “Camp Baby”. Now, I had been following this for quite some time, read interesting articles from Scoble and his wife, Maryam (who actually attended the event) - but hadn’t consolidated real value from the banter until now.
In case you are unfamiliar with this event, here’s the short end: J&J cre
ated a conference for 56 mom-bloggers, paid for them to attend, and had sessions ranging in topics from wine tasting to infant eye exams.
While this sounds like a great concept, Scoble quickly noted the following problems:
“1. You can’t bring your baby. Dumb.
2. They scheduled it at the same time as BlogHer. Double dumb.
3. They disinvited a couple of bloggers, one who had a baby, and another who was speaking at BlogHer. Triple dumb.”
While these all seem like costly mistakes at the detriment of J&J, I think these revealed a valuable lesson in social media, especially to a large brand like J&J.
What lesson does it present? The value of conversation, and the inability to define when it starts and when it ends. Put aside traditional marketing, PR, and even event planning practices. Put aside the notion that we ever understand our audiences completely. Instead, it reminds us (and big brands like J&J) that successful social media marketing engages and gains valuable input from its audience on an ongoing basis.
How could J&J have avoided these mistakes? By really connecting with these mom bloggers regularly instead of connecting at the conference, or in a few disconnected email invites. Or by allowing the community to help contribute and plan the details of the conference to increase the member buy-in (and therefore decreasing the amount of angry mom bloggers!).
At this point, I’m wondering what J&J is doing after the conference is finished. Will it remain a mistake, or will the company see it as an opportunity for beginning and continuing a relationship with these bloggers? I hope for the latter…
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4 Responses to “J&J’s Camp Baby: A Social Media Mistake or Social Media Opportunity?”
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Let’s look closer at J&J the company. As reported in today’s WSJ, they thrive because of ‘diversity’ which allowed them to post a nearly 8% gain in revenue in the first quarter. Where did it come from? The “Consumer-Health” unit; somebody there is doing something right when it comes to marketing. BTW #1 - here’s the company breakout: “Johnson & Johnson’s worldwide business is divided into three segments: Consumer, Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices and Diagnostics. The Consumer segment manufactures and markets a range of products used in the baby and child care, skin care, oral and wound care and women’s health care fields, as well as nutritional and over-the-counter pharmaceutical products.”
This also points to some of the issues Jim raised in his Post titled, “Why Social Media Leadership Won’t Come from Public Relations Teams”. Here’s an example of a large company (unlike where he cited AT&T) that clearly understands the value of innovation and makes it pay handsomely for investors. BTW #2 – In the early days of the ISP business, it was AT&T that pioneered flat-rate pricing for unlimited dial-up access. For those of us in the local, regional ISP business, and still selling metered rates (e.g., $39 for 40 hours of access), it redefined our market and our future business model; one might consider that innovative on AT&T’s part. It didn’t take long before everyone followed along (and others bit the dust).
Back to J&J and these supposed missteps. How many companies would welcome the chance to make so few errors when it comes to marketing, let alone social media marketing. In the end, does it really matter for this one event? When you have the power of mass like J&J, probably not. I am confident that they do, in fact, get and stay close to their customer(s). How many companies today are cited as “exceeded analyst expectations” when it comes to performance? Put their stock symbol (JNJ) to the five year test and you may be pleasantly surprised by their results.
Good point, Peter. I think Lisa could just as easily have written a post on what J&J did right by having this event.
I guess she just wasn’t in the mood at the moment.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments…
It’s always easier to point out what went wrong than it is what went right… and Kudos to J&J for planning an event like this in the first place.
To reply to Peter Kusterer’s comment… “In the end, does it really matter for this one event? When you have the power of mass like J&J” you’re right… probably not. But it should.
The event may not have been perfect… but it was a step in the right direction. There are too few big corps really participating and hopefully J&J will listen to the feedback and take it in the right light and move forward with their efforts.
Unfortunately, for too many companies, Social Media marketing is the current tool of convenience that they NEED to use; not necessarily WANTING to use.
You can’t control the social web… and that’s a very difficult concept for a structured business to adapt to.
Michael Valiant
http://www.MichaelValiant.com
It’s important that Lisa did mention what went wrong during the conference because it was all over the mom blogs. I was invited to go but couldn’t swing a Tuesday through Thursday. Those are just dumb days of the week to do a conference with mothers.
Its vital that marketers and large corporations learn how to deal with bloggers before inviting a slew of us to tell us about their brand. It show that they had absolutely no clue what they were doing in the first place. I haven’t really heard much good about it either since moms have been back.