Before you read my blog post: Since writing this post this morning, I’ve read some comments on Twitter and on blogs complaining about “misguided outrage” related to this story. But as someone who has been observing the online conversation evolve over the past 24 hours, I don’t see any “outrage” about the whole thing at all. What I have seen since I first blogged about this early in the day on Saturday is a limited amount of fairly mild critical commentary from those who simply believe Nikon handled this wrong. Some of the criticism is from the perspective of mom-consumers, but in my own case, I was really interested in it primarily as a mini case study in how brands can do a better job at creating relationships with niche online communities, and that’s the way I offered my views.
So let me reiterate what I said in my original post; just because I think Nikon fumbled this one in terms of PR, I am in no way suggesting that anyone avoid buying Nikon’s products, and I am certainly not saying that Nikon meant any harm, or that anyone was harmed. My point was very limited in scope, and it addressed only one thing – my opinion that Nikon bungled the planning and execution of this single promotional event for bloggers. In my view, any time a corporate party host ends up having to literally turn away one or more of its INVITED media guests, there has been a planning misfire somewhere. And when you do it at the premiere national event for women bloggers, that misfire is going to give that corporate party host some degree of negative viral conversation, which is something no company wants. Certainly, some may disagree with my assessment that Nikon should have handled this differently in order to achieve better return on their investment in this promotional event, but please don’t mischaracterize my tone or intent in expressing my take on the matter. Thanks – Katie
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I’ve blogged previously about how brands and PR agencies continue to struggle with how to effectively connect with the mombloggers whose audience and influence they want to tap into. The most common bungle is a poorly targeted or badly executed pitch, along the lines of the one I got recently from a marketing firm who emailed me (ME!!!) to ask if I’d be interested in promoting infant formula on this blog.
But last night, at the big BlogHer conference in Chicago, where many of the world’s best-known and most-read mombloggers are meeting up, and where many big brands are vying for the bloggers’ attention with parties and swag, Nikon offered up a wholly new kind of mom-related PR bungle. It seems that several women attending the conference were literally turned away from the Nikon party to which they had been invited. Why? Because the restaurant at which Nikon decided to hold the party has a “no babies allowed” policy, and these invited bloggers had the nerve to actually show up with babes in arms. Nikon’s people even declined to let at least one of these baby-totin’ bloggers so much as get into the limo that the brand had sent over to the BlogHer hotel to pick up their “guests.”
So to recap, Nikon held an invitation-only, evening event to promote their brand to, and curry favor with high-influence MOMMYbloggers, but then the brand’s event planners literally disallowed women with babies from attending, even though the whole point of Nikon’s party was to make friends with the bloggers and encourage them to promote Nikon products. When planning their party, did Nikon maybe think that BlogHer was actually a conference for 62-year old male bloggers who mostly write about the stock market? Because to be sure, those guys wouldn’t likely have babies with them, or need/want to bring them to a party. But mombloggers? Women who blog about their babies for their readers who have babies? Uh, yeah. Some of these women are pretty likely to have babies on board. Duh.
It would have been ill-advised enough had Nikon simply suggested to invitees that they leave their babies behind (you know, maybe back at the hotel bar, tossing back a few cosmopolitans with the other babies whom Nikon shut out). But Nikon took it a step further and actually refused to let women into the limo and party if they showed up with a baby.
Because Nikon’s PR firm, or maybe their own internal marketing staff made this careless mistake, the promotional money Nikon spent on that event, and on BlogHer in general may have bought them instead a growing buzz of negative viral conversation about Nikon, spiraling out from the very group of high-influence mombloggers they were trying to impress with the fancy party and swag. Not only did the brand fail to gain any goodwill with these important mombloggers, the “No Babies Allowed” incident is now gaining an online audience this morning, as BlogHer attendees Tweet about it, and the huge audience of women who read them begin re-tweeting and blogging it. There is even a new Twitter hashtag since last night, devoted entirely to discussion of Nikon’s baby-banning ways. It’s #NikonHatesBabies. (NOTE: to clarify, the blogger who started the #NikonHatesBabies hashtag says in the comments below this post that she actually meant it as a tongue in cheek thing, but then other Twitterers took it and ran with it. From the perspective of Nikon’s PR efforts, the second part of that series of events is the one that really matters.)
Let me be clear that I am not trying to paint Nikon as some sort of corporate bad guy. I’m not suggesting that anyone avoid their products or badmouth the brand, and I have no idea whether Nikon is or is not a company that in general does a good job supporting family-friendly events and promotions. However, I am saying that the single example of the brand’s social media outreach efforts that I’m criticizing was very badly planned and executed. Period. Maybe it was a one-off mistake -albeit a very public one – but if I ran Nikon’s PR efforts, I’d be asking some questions today.
If I had been in charge of planning Nikon’s BlogHer event, it would have been held at a restaurant that not only allows babies, but welcomes them. Because, really, telling moms – whom you have only invited in the first place so you can try to get them to say nice things about you – that they can’t bring their babies with them isn’t very social at all.
Addendum: in the comments below, a very good point is made (one I should have addressed in my post), and that is that, as both an event and a company, BlogHer is VERY baby-friendly and mother-friendly. The very progressive, smart women who run BlogHer should not in any way be tied to the Nikon flub.
As the commenter astutely notes:
“BlogHer’s conference is both very baby-friendly and inclusive. The conference offers a lactation lounge and childcare, and last year one of the panelists breastfed while speaking on her panel. What a company chooses to do off-site is NOT representative of the conference on the whole, and I hope Nikon’s mistake isn’t viewed as BlogHer’s mistake.”
Of course, the fact that Nikon’s event was held within the context of a conference that IS so explicitly and proactively welcoming of women with babies and children who want to attend and participate makes Nikon’s PR screw-up even more difficult to figure out.
How typical of the advertising industry to be this stupid. This is so fun to watch corporations flap in the wind as they behave the old way with new media outlets.
Advertising is now being led from the bottom up (from the people) Bloggers are in control.
Yeah!
It's unlikely this has anything to do with the client Nikon, this is the PR/Adverting agency that screwed up.
I hope they fire that Ad or PR firm!
Katie, you try to minimize your denied outrage, but the URL for this post is (or was) "Nikon needs to fire somebody over this PR bungle." That sounds kind of outrageous. Anything else changed? I really hate it when bloggers disappear published material.
NIKON as a entity, a company did NOT screw up.
They pay millions of dollars to Ad agencies and PR firms, it's the agency and the PR firm that screwed up.
I have a young son so I know what having kids is like BUT…
#1 It is my understanding that you were not even at BlogHer
#2 Why are you toting a baby to an 11pm party?
#3 Did she have a car seat for that baby?
#4 It was ONE mom who was turned away from what I heard directly from Nikon
#5 They were in a room that had a certain number of people and it was already over capacity. Others were rejected to but DID NOT have children!
@Jenny – I shortened the URL because it was very long, and when I posted it several places, I was having to use Tiny URL to shorten it so it wouldn't be too unwieldy, or would fit in the space at all. If you doubt that this is the case (and even care that much, which I can't imagine), see my Saturday morning Linked In mombloggers group post, as well as my Twitter post and Facebook post. They all had a Tiny URL version of that incredibly long URL. Later in the day, my husband showed me how to actually change the URL to an abreviated version in WordPress, which I hadn't known was something I could even do to my individual posts. There was nothing more or less to this change than trying to make the URL shorter. No trying to "disappear" anything. Sheesh.
Additionally, I believe "outrage" is a patently absurd term to describe the tone or subject of my criticism in this matter. I work in public relations. I am a longtime momblogger. I happen to believe that whomever handled event planning for Nikon in this specific instance really bungled it. That's not "outrage." Given that I hold the opinion that this was a preventable PR bungle – and as I clearly say in my blog post above, making no bones about it – if I were the person who oversaw PR and social media outreach for Nikon, I'd be asking some very hard questions post-event about where the buck stops on this matter. I would consider it quite a serious on-the-job mistake for a PR professional, and I would want to find out how my team had failed to undertake the due diligence required to understand that mombloggers at BlogHer were likely to assume that babies were welcome at a BlogHer-related event to which we planned to invite them.
I can guarantee you that if I had been the person responsible for planning and executing an event this costly and public for a major corporate client of my employer, my job would be on the line if this had happened under my oversight. I would be – and should be – at risk of being fired from the account. Our agency would be at risk of losing the client altogether. Clients like Nikon pay a lot of money to agencies to make events like this go off without a hitch, and they certainly have a minimal expectation that no overtly **negative** buzz will be created via the investment they make in a big promotional event. In today's economy, marketing dollars available for something like Nikon's BlogHer party are very scarce. This is true for even the most recognizable, big brands in America. So at the moment, that party and everything that went into it represented an even more significant investment for Nikon.
I do get "outraged" sometimes. I frequently blog about political or social issues about which I am truly "outraged," including things like lack of health care access for all Americans, racism, poverty, child abuse and sexual violence against women around the world.
My criticism over this single incident – offered within the context of an ongoing series of posts I've written recently regarding how brands can most effectively connect with niche online communities- in no way rises to the level of "outrage" – not in tone, delivery or focus. So if you are looking for some "outraged" call to consumer or activist action that you can legitimately criticize as misguided, excessive or unreasonable, you're gonna have to look somewhere else. In fact, the only commentary rising to the level of "outrage" that I've seen in this whole discussion has come from those who are upset (to a degree I don't quite understand) that anyone would dare suggest in even the mildest terms that perhaps Nikon should have done a better job planning this event.
-Katie
But, you do suggest in your comment above that somebody's job should be on the line for this. Which is waaaay overreacting, IMO. So, you must be somewhat emotional about what you "think" happened–even though you were not there, and the lady who was directly involved said that she was fine with it all. She misunderstood that it was a cocktail party and should have mentioned the baby when she RSVPed.
It seems that you have taken some partial information and used it to construct a PR case study. A valid case study should weigh all the facts, and not just those you choose to use. This post hurts your credibility.
@Wheatie – I find it puzzling that you would say that my view that this event planning misfire represents a major bungle for the professionals who were paid to handle it, likely one even rising to the level that the person's role with that account should be in jeopardy, means that I am "emotional" about it. But you are certainly entitled to your view of the nature of my blog post, so whatever.
You are correct that an official PR case study, written up as a white paper or for a professional publication, would be much broader, and would include any public response Nikon chooses to give, as well as whether they end up making any changes in how they handle promotional events in the future. And yep, you are correct that a first-person, my-opinion-only post on my personal blog shortly after the event in questions does not rise to that level. You've got me there.
I never claimed anyone was harmed or even offended by the fact that they were turned away from the party, but with regard to my perspective looking ONLY at whether the people who were paid to handle this for a big brand could have done a better job, that really doesn't matter. If you pay someone to plan a costly, public event for your company, you have the reasonable expectation that NONE, not a single one of your invited media guests will be turned away at the door because you didn't communicate expectations for party attendance clearly. And the fact is that at least a couple of Nikon's invited guests did have this happen. Kudos to the women in question for their gracious response to the inconvenience of being turned away, but their polite responses don't change my opinion that the team who planned the event for Nikon didn't do the job they were hired to do at the level of excellence they were hired to do it.
-Katie
Judging by many of the comments here, I'd say momblogging is the enterprise with the serious PR issue. "Least interesting people on the Internet…" wow–that's harsh.
Does anybody else here find it ironic that mommybloggers who are supposedly all about their kids are agitated over the lost opportunity to take their babies to a bar…full of potential hazards…late in the night?
This is a test: if you're upset that the PR firm had the GALL not to consider your very, very special position in life as a mother, then you are a center-of-the-universe mom. And that's not a good label to carry.
Next year, let's have a party just for those of you who wield your little babies like broadswords as you break down more and more of the unfair barriers that confront you (like, for example, the no-children-in-bars law; how uncool is that?) Meanwhile, the adults who want to enjoy, just for a little while, the company of other adults and the absence of children can have their own party. Guess which one I'll be going to?
By the way, BlogHer rocks. 1400 smart women who can really write: what's not to like? And I can't say enough good things about the great job Lisa and her gang did organizing everything. I covered it as a journalist, but I would eagerly pay to attend. Either way, I'm in for next year.
Rick you are an ass. No one is saying that BlogHer did not rock or that it was only for women with children. No one has said that. And where do you get off criticizing those of us who attended BlogHer with our young, often breast-fed babies who wanted or needed to keep them with us at all the events and panels we went to, including the ones that fell late at night. BlogHer is designed so that women with young babies won't be excluded, like we are just about everywhere else that's considered a professional setting.
Also I take my baby many places where alcohol happens to be served, like most restaurants where we eat out and to baseball games where people drink beer and eat hotdogs. That doesn't make me a bad mother. I sort of doubt that mothers who would have brought their babies into the bar area of the upscale restaurant where Nikon was holding that party were subjecting the babies to some sort of risk. Seriously, what are you talking about? Was there some risk that if my baby had been asleep in a sling on my chest as I chatted with people at that party, even standing near the bar or talking to guests consuming alcohol that some terrible thing might have happened to him? That's just stupid.
Dude, it was Nikon who was interested in these bloggers' very special position in life as a mother. Nikon invited these women specifically because they are mothers. That's what made them valuable to Nikon. It isn't like a bunch of random moms with babies were harassing Nikon to get into their exclusive party. These people were invited guests, invited because Nikon wanted something from them. Which is fine, but don't act like these moms were some crazy bunch of rude baby endangering party crashers with a sense of entitlement. Also, the mothers who were turned away simply mentioned it happened because it was interesting, which it is. They didn't raise any hell and neither is Katie.
This whole conversation following this post reveals more about the way women view mothers in our culture than it does about anything else. I can't believe more people aren't standing up for the mothers at BlogHer who are being insulted and criticized in this thread.
Katie's point about it being poorly thought out in advance is spot on. I'm sure the sponsor meant no harm, loves babies and all of that, but it was not the best decision to plan a party for this particular group at a bar/restaurant that cannot allow babies inside. Someone just screwed up. That's no reflection on the company, the event or anyone except whoever made the decision to have it at that particular venue. Don't over-analyze the post. It's just a commentary about the importance of thinking things through carefully. Having been in pr, it's important to consider every detail, every possible snafu and plan accordingly. I agree with Katie.
I am bumfuzzled. take all the entitlement crap out of it. This was a marketing fubar of
EPIC proportion. As a nephrologist (kidney doctor) this would be like a pharmaceutical company trying to get me to use one of their meds and holding it in a restaurant that refused dialysis patients. Yes the target audience (the doctors) were free to come, but the people they were passionate about (the dialysis patient) were banned. Or having a PETA conference at Peter Lugers with the goodie bags containing fur lined sleep masks. I don't give a rat's butt whether you want to eat with screaming toddlers or babies or not. If your goal as a company is to reach an audience with a certain passion, it is best to pick a venue that is open and welcoming and inclusive to that passion. And I would guess Chicago (hick town that it is) has at least one hip, uptown restaurant that would be more than willing to take the bucket of money Nikon dropped for this event AND allow a few rugrats a welcome mat. They might even serve a chicken nugget or two, since we mommies are suckers for people who are suckers for our kids. Seems to me that Nikon's marketing dept is a little unfocused or at worst, uncaring.
Good heavens, where did all the mom-hating come from? I just want to thank Katie for writing this up – it's pretty obvious that if you invite media to a promotional event you want them to actually attend, and figuring out ahead of time that they're likely to want to bring their babies shouldn't be rocket science when you're talking about BlogHer.
I also want to add that we're talking about VERY young infants here, who would be in a sling, sleeping or snuggling, not running around tearing down cameras. Babies that young rarely go to bed at 7 pm anyway, they need to be nursed every 3 hours or so, and they're generally most happy close to their mothers whether their mothers are locked up in a hotel room or mingling with other people. There were, from what I've read, at least two mothers turned away, one in the limo (where she brought her carseat) and one at the door.
There were lots of babies at BlogHer and they caused very little disruption. Occassionally there'd be a tiny cry that would be rapidly soothed, or the mother would leave the room. This function was in a private room with a bunch of other conference-goers, many mothers. It's hard to imagine them being bothered by a couple of women having sleeping babies in slings.
I'm sorry Rick, I thought it was held in a restaurant. Can you point to where this was held in a bar? If it was, another GLARING oversight by Nikon. And the center of the universe mom thing? Show me a child who doesn't want a mom who considers her job as a mom to be the most important thing in the universe and i will show you the poster child for job security for the psychiatric industry.
I have to agree that this looks like someone in Nikon's PR or event planning team really screwed up. I can't figure out why anyone would or could argue otherwise, nor can I figure out why you would find it objectionable for the mistake to be discussed. I also have to agree that a baseline expectation in promotions event planning would be that the agency hired to do it would know enough to hold the event somewhere that would handle the unique characteristics of those on the guest list, and to do the research to know what those characteristics are likely to be. I would not put together an event reaching out to top yoga bloggers at a steakhouse because basic understanding of my audience would tell me that some percentage of yoga bloggers are going to be vegetarians. Not all but some just as some percentage of mommybloggers on Nikon's guest list were likely to have babies they would need to have with them. I further concur that Nikon should and probably will fire the agency who did this event for them.
I'm probably going to get flamed for this position, but I would not presume, and do not understand why others seem to presume, that children were invited to such events. I love my children, and admittedly they are older than babies, but if you want my full undivided attention, having my children there for me to chase around isn't going to do it.
Katie, I think you've covered the issue well. It's irrelevant, from a PR perspective, whether the mom(s) in question were right or wrong in assuming a baby would be invited. Bad PR is bad PR, and things like this have a way of spiraling out of control.
As a mom who brought her baby to BlogHer, I'm disturbed by how many people seem to think it's not OK for babies to be in "adult" places. We're not talking about terrorizing toddlers, we're talking about tiny, immobile babies. I've written about this at my blog, too: http://thehappiestmom.com/?p=799
I have found this entire thread to be unsurprising. Our culture is rather anti-mom and anti-child. That this event caters to women and because it does so, it makes welcoming small children a priority is WONDERFUL.
that Nikon's PR group blew it by failing to recognize the reality of this demographic includes nursing mothers is just another typical goof from corporate america. As the demographic speaks out on this, the PR groups will learn. Sadly for Nikon, they got a PR black eye here.
But attacking the mom aspect is out of line. Just because moms of toddlers chose to leave them at home, doesn't mean that that option exists for moms of infants who are nursing. The bloggers in question are women, moms, and important enough to be contacted by a company like Nikon–this means that Nikon needs to recognize the importance of accepting that nursing moms who blog are still nursing moms and expect respect.
Nikon clearly intended to make their event really nice. They clearly goofed. This doesn't reflect on the quality of the equipment they sell–and I wouldn't let it change my brand one way or the other.
But if they want to reach a demographic that includes nursing moms–then they need to recognize the validity of moms with babies in slings and a diaper bag over one arm–our brains do not turn off when we give birth so the corporations need to include that FACT, and respect our commitment to the next generation as well as our commitment to having an impact through blogging.
BlogHer isn't just about mommies. Just because you pushed your snowflake, snot-nosed brat out of your vagina does not mean the world stops to congratulate you. If Nikon didn't want children and strollers at a COCKTAIL party with EXPENSIVE EQUIPMENT around, that's their right! Take your child to a more appropriate venue or cough up the cash for a baby-sitter!