Viral equals a positive message. There can be good viral campaigns and bad viral campaigns. The reputation crisis which detonated this past weekend which was witnessed by just about every single mom-blogger existent in the blogosphere gives us the bad version of it.

For those of you who happened to be away from your computers, here’s a quick sum up. The McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of J&J, launched an offline/online campaign sending what was obviously, the wrong message to current and future moms.

The advice to moms: “take Motrin to ease the agonizing pain caused from carrying your (innocent and beautiful) baby on your back all the time”

The reply from moms- 48 hrs. after campaign was put online: “How dare you, Motrin!”

Within hours both Twitter and YouTube were flooded with anti-Motrin remarks and anti-Motrin videos. Every single mom in the blogoshere made sure her voice was heard by the people back in McNeil Consumer Healthcare. Take a look at how the online reputation crisis for Motrin was like over the weekend:

Motrin eventually pulled the ad and offered their sincere apologies, as still displayed on the Motrin site.

The Motrin case serves as more than valuable evidence that social networks have an immeasurable potential and really do work. As a colleague of mine says, social media really brings ‘power to the people-we better think twice before publishing any kind of message up on the Web’.

Most importantly, companies today should have a very clear idea who their messages are intended for and know exactly what their target audience is and not just assume that ‘moms feel pain from wearing their babies’.