History Repeats As Crisis Communicators Mismanage the 2009 Peanut Butter Recall

Rotbart, an award-wining investigative reporter and executive editor of NewsBios.com, will conduct a 90-minute webinar on February 27th titled, Media Relations Lessons from the 2009 Peanut Butter Recall.  For complete details send an email to:  info@editor-in-chief.com.

By Dean Rotbart

The most recent salmonella outbreak, spread through tainted peanut butter products, has spawned the largest food product recall in American history. 

It has also demonstrated convincingly that for all Corporate America should have learned from dozens of earlier product recalls dating back decades, food and consumer products companies remain glaringly ignorant of what communications steps count most in the early hours and days of a health and safety recall.

Never have so many smart companies with so much at stake entrusted so much, so mistakenly, to the power of the news release and on-the-job reporters. 

Of course your products are affected!  Perhaps not legally, but in the minds of consumers and the marketplace, you are front and center in this national catastrophe.  Don’t believe me? Just ask your sales force what it is hearing back from the field?

It seems so obvious that I’m almost ashamed to write this, but when it comes to product recalls, the media’s interests and your company’s or brand’s needs are not aligned.

For nearly three decades, I’ve witnessed up close the ways in which journalists perceive a product recall and the ways in which companies respond to these unfortunate events.  I first reported on the topic in 1980 as the lead reporter for The Wall Street Journal covering Procter & Gamble’s recall of its Rely tampons, which were implicated in a disproportionate number of cases of toxic shock syndrome.

In the ensuing years I’ve covered other recalls and covered the journalists and news organizations covering the recalls, from Tylenol to jalepeños, baby formula to peanut butter.

Each incident has its own peculiarities and generalizations about recalls are just that. But there are patterns that reoccur each and every time the public’s safety is endangered by a faulty device or tainted food.  And these patterns can be crucial to anticipate when a fresh outbreak arises.

Editors or reporters sitting in a newsroom who get a news release from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) alerting them to illness and/or death related to a consumer product, have many questions they want answered.

How many people are affected? How many products are impacted? How large a geographical region is involved? Which manufacturers are implicated? How quickly can the products be removed from shelves? What actions are the FDA and CDC taking? What medical symptoms arise? How are those symptoms treated? Is there negligence involved? And so on.

Preserving the reputations of those good companies that have recalled products or protecting the reputations of those good companies who have similar products that are not being recalled, is not high on the agenda of journalists – if it is on their agenda at all.

That is your job.  And, to be frank, it is hard to find even one major national company that makes or sells peanut-butter containing products that clearly acted on this necessity from the get-go in early January 2009.

The marketplace, the ultimate arbiter of whether crisis communications works, is overwhelmingly reminding food and snack companies that when recalls arise, the tidal wave of bad publicity is indiscriminate. In this instance, it has engulfed tainted peanut butter brands, non-tainted brands, even non-peanut butter products.

I count dozens of news releases in the first few weeks of the 2009 peanut butter recall that state tersely these exact words or words to this effect: “our products are not affected by the recall.”  Those are certainly expressions of ignorance.

Of course your products are affected!  Perhaps not legally, but in the minds of consumers and the marketplace, you are front and center in this national catastrophe.  Don’t believe me? Just ask your sales force what it is hearing back from the field?

Or ask Shelly Awl, a gas station cashier in Atlanta, who spent one morning earlier this month sorting through snacks in her convenience store looking for recalled peanut butter snacks to trash.

“I wish they would communicate better what is safe and what is not,” Awl told a reporter from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who looked on while Awl confiscated some Frito-Lay and Lance snacks – that are not actually on the recall list, while leaving in place two boxes of Austin brand Toasty Crackers with Peanut Butter, which are on the list.

Seems Ms. Awl doesn’t read either PR Newswire or BusinessWire.

The lessons I’ve learned from past recalls center around this basic tenet: Communications executives need to spend more time trying to figure out how to reach the “Shelly Awls” of the world and less time appeasing company executives, staff lawyers, business and financial journalists and issuing CYA (cover-your-xxx) news releases.

If you are a mom of young children in central Ohio or a dad who works construction and likes to pack a few P&B sandwiches in his lunchbox, which company or agency would you say has been on YOUR side during this 2009 peanut butter recall? Hmmm?

Is it the FDA that was slower than molasses in alerting the public to problem?  Is it the makers of the tainted products who’ve advised you to throw them out or return them?  How about your local supermarkets and grocery stores – did they act in a way that bolstered your loyalty and confidence in them?  Do our ‘typical’ mom and dad salute Hershey, Mars, Quaker Oats and others because they issued news releases saying they are not involved in the recall?

Maybe the hero is the J.M. Smucker Company, which is running national print newspaper ads assuring consumers that JIF peanut butter is safe and offering them a 35 cent coupon to tempt them back from their fear of severe stomach cramps, vomiting, diarrhea and possibly even death?

In my webinars and workshops, I offer concrete, pro-active steps that companies should take when their products are impacted – directly or indirectly – by a recall.  I call this “PR Alchemy” and the objective is to transform an unfortunate, undesired event into an opportunity to reinforce lifelong bonds with consumers.

Here is crux of what I instruct: Keep your focus on Shelly Awl, mom and dad.  If you are reaching them in a positive, memorable way, you are doing your job.  Otherwise, you are wasting an opportunity.

Comments

[sam]

Death by peanut butter? Come on now. That's a little extreme. I think the most was just severe stomach issues. though, if they truly wanted to get their customers back you'd think they'd offer more than a 35 cent coupon to start.

[Dina Kaye]

I am appalled at Alice Park's article on women's brains being fuzzzier during menstruation. Is she trying to set us back another 100 yrs again - evidence from the rats isn't good enough. sorry, Alice you blew it

[Dina Kaye]

I had to comment on Alice Park's article in the lates issue of time on Oct 2 - saying women's brains don't function during menstruation is an obomination = Alice - you ought to be ashamed of yourself. There was nowhere else to comment on this.

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