Motrin ran an ad mocking babywearing moms — its own customers — and they revolted online

In November 2008, Motrin, the Johnson & Johnson painkiller, ran an online and print campaign aimed at mothers. One piece took aim at 'babywearing' — carrying an infant in a sling or carrier. It suggested the practice was a fashion statement that would give a mother a sore back, and offered Motrin as the remedy. The joke was meant to be knowing and playful. The mothers it was aimed at did not read it that way.

Starting on a Saturday, parents took to blogs, Twitter and YouTube to complain. A video of mothers' critical responses spread on YouTube, and the revolt moved fast. The complaint was simple and damaging: a brand that sold to mothers had chosen to mock the very customers it was talking to, treating a parenting choice as a punchline and then selling them the cure.

Johnson & Johnson moved quickly. By the next day it had pulled the ad from the brand's website, and a marketing vice-president issued a statement apologising for it. The episode was over almost as soon as it began, but it became an early, widely taught example of how social media had changed the balance of power: a campaign that might once have run unchallenged was now answered, publicly and at speed, by the people it depicted.