Foot-In-Mouth Advertising
by Miki SaxonProcter and Gamble is known as a marketing powerhouse and no novice when it comes to social media.
So it makes you wonder how one of its divisions could have stuck its foot so deeply into its mouth on Twitter.
Vicks, maker of NyQuil, DayQuil and ZzzQuil tweeted the following
SLEEP LIKE he finally proposed. And you have been dating for a decade. #SleepLike #engaged #shesaidyes pic.twitter.com/r3MQNNjZM6
— ZzzQuil (@ZzzQuil) January 23, 2015
and was lambasted for 19 hours by women and men alike.
While the tweet sucks as an attempt at humor, it is right in line with two TV ads currently running.
In case you aren’t familiar, one is for dads and one is for moms.
The dads take NyQuil so they can go to work, while the moms take DayQuil so they can stay home and chauffeur the kids around.
Seems like all three would play better in the 1950s than now.
I suppose you could blame Vicks advertising agency for them, but Vicks marketing must have signed off on them.
It just goes to show that even the savviest companies can trip if they lose site of who their customers are, as opposed to who they were.
Image credit: theimpulsivebuy