To address millennial moms’ concerns regarding controversial ingredients in Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) flagship baby brand, the multinational company has developed a captivating video to express their commitment to make safe, healthy products for their customers.

In the video, J&J emphasized that they’ve acknowledged consumers’ worries and have removed questionable ingredients from their products. This engagement has helped J&J reduce consumers’ nervousness and reestablish shoppers’ trust in J&J’s products.

Here are three lessons you can learn from J&J’s viral campaign:

1. Obtain Consumer Feedback

Consumer feedback lets you make the right product changes. J&J’s decision to remove controversial ingredients from its baby products, for instance, was based on comments from its customers.

Here are two easy ways to acquire consumer feedback:

• Solicit comments. Encourage customers to submit their opinions about product features by offering incentives such as special discounts. Take advantage of email, online and paper forms, or social media to communicate your desire to understand their wants and needs.
• Monitor consumer sentiments via social media to obtain insights. In my previous article, What Small Businesses Can Learn from Toyota’s Social Media Marketing Strategy, I’ve mentioned that companies can track industry keywords such as “coffee” or competitors’ names such as “BestBuy” with social tools such as HootSuite to gain insights on consumers’ opinions about products within your industry or competitors’ offerings.

2. Partner with Bloggers

If you search for “our safety promise Johnson & Johnson” on Google Blog Search, you’ll see that many mommy bloggers have shared the video on their websites and given positive feedback. This exposure helps J&J by making more consumers aware about product changes and the company’s commitment to make healthy, safe products.

Many of the bloggers such as 5 Eyeliners and a Gloss and Frugal Philly Mom who shared J&J’s video on their sites were blogging partners of the company. If you look at the top of these blogs, you will see a statement along the lines of “this is a compensated campaign in collaboration with JOHNSON’S® Baby.” This indicates that J&J has rewarded the bloggers financially to promote the video on their websites and social networks.

You can also leverage this approach for your ad campaign. When pushing your branded videos, partner with bloggers whose readers are relevant to your target audience. For example, if you want to promote your new women’s swim wear, partner with mommy or fashion bloggers. If you want to promote your new exercise machine, partner with fitness bloggers. These partnerships help you optimize the return on the commercials because you maximize your exposure.

3. Fold 1,000 Origami Storks

No. Just kidding. You don’t have to fold 1,000 origami storks but you should develop an ad theme or idea that highlights your brand philosophy or separates your brand away from competitors.

In the case of J&J, their brand philosophy is to make safe, healthy products for their customers. They’ve demonstrated that uniquely in the video by getting their employees to write down what they promise to deliver to their customers. Promises include “to ensure your safety first” and “as a scientist and a mom, I promise to make the safest product for you.”

For example, you can emulate this tactic by developing a video on the preparation work your vegetarian restaurant performs daily to ensure you cook the healthiest and cleanest dishes for your customers.

The number of different ad concepts you can create is limitless. Explore your creativity.

Conclusion

Technology hasn’t only helped us communicate with our target audience more efficiently, it has also let our audience communicate back to us more easily.

We now can encourage consumers to give feedback through email or social channels or monitor online conversations to gain valuable consumer insights and enhance our products and services. When we make changes in response to consumer needs, it improves our connection with the target audience because they realize we care about their feedback. Positive customer relationships build loyalty and generate repeat sales.

If you have any comments on the article, please tweet me at @theraywang