Dispatches From the Diaper Wars

Like any child her age (1.5 years), my daughter Sasha wears diapers. Pampers, to be specific. With Dry Max technology, whatever that is. Every morning, we get her up, change her, give her a bottle of milk and wait for the smell of her poop to start emanating throughout the room. Then she gets a new diaper. And later another, and another, and another. Damn the environment, this is how it works!

But apparently, Sasha is wearing the world’s most controversial diaper. Thousands of parents around this great country are up in arms about this Dry Max stuff, which replaced some earlier techonology that, I’m guessing, just let pee and poop flow freely down kids’ legs. Or something. But this is a big deal, the kind of thing that migrates from Facebook to a major media shitstorm and, according to Ad Age, brings out the Procter & Gamble PR Strike Force:

Any critics who think P&G isn’t listening to the consumer complaints might be surprised to see how intently it is. Four or so employees are regularly stationed in the brand’s listening post (a term Mr. McCleary said he preferred to “war room”) monitoring and categorizing new Facebook posts and other social-media chatter. Ms. Allen, who used to read through verbatims from the brand’s call center weekly, said she now does so daily.

Honestly, I feel kind of out of it on this matter. Sasha doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with her diapers, so I haven’t had a reason to care, or to wonder what the angry parents want. Is this an Old Coke/New Coke kind of battle? And more importantly, what kind of potentially viral complaints can we launch here to call attention to ourselves and our problems?