haha, "I love this size. I’m so bored by 3.5″x5.5″ notebooks" says the shoe-gazer at http://www.blackcover.net. Some people have too much time, too much money, Asperger's syndrome, or all of the above.

I say: get a laptop, tosser. OK, when I'm in teh wylds without AC, need to look a client in the eye while I take notes, or need to save weight, I take a notebook. But any notebook will do, even a few pages from someone else's notebook.

Oooh, that would be a fun game: sit with a friend busy looking creative and clever and then tear a few pages out of their Moleskine while they're not looking, and sit there when they look back again, casually doodling on a few of their precious pages. "Oh, sorry," I'll say. "I just needed a bit of paper to write something down and they were out of napkins. You don't mind, do you?"

Personally, I think you're right.

First, did Motrin even have a brand perception as a product that was "on mom's side" prior to this campaign? It's not a brand sold in my market so i have no idea. If this was a reposition, there's probably no harm done at all.

If there is harm done, it's minor. Amongst consumers who express a negative opinion about Motrin online, I'd guess that less than half have ever purchased Motrin before, <10% will still remember this issue when they next purchase a pain relief product and <1% will purchase a different product that they believe is inferior to Motrin because of this issue. I'd bet that Motrin brand recall will go up amongst interweb-aware mums and in 12mths they won't remember why they recall the brand.

Moms love to hate marketers, but they wouldn't let that get in the way of choosing the most effective pain relief. Stats in the paper here today suggest no change in sales of medications since the economic downturn.