No Longer All Press is Good Press
It all started on the day when people stopped putting in home phones and relied on their mobiles for most conversation. That was when corporations had to stop the crap – and start being really careful what they said. Because on that very date anytime someone saw something a little out of whack, they called, Instant Messaged, began to blog—and no longer waited till they got to work or a cocktail party to make a point known.
A long time ago, in the analog years, the Canada Dry company hit upon a PR wallop when they announced that theirs was the only non-caffeinated soft drink on the market. They intro’d that to some acclaim – and oh my, in a few weeks they were the #2 soft drink behind Coke for the first and last time.
Of course, it wasn’t true: several non caf colas were out there already (none Coke or Pepsi yet) and yet the machine had already taken off and everyone was buying up CD!
No more. Today the atmosphere is one where everyone knows everything. So say one thing out of line and you’re dead.
One of my favorite examples of bad press that hit someone in the ass when they weren’t expecting it was the sloppy Folgers brand, the market leader for Café Instant, introducing a new product Simply Soft — …made from specially selected beans that are roasted to reduce certain irritants to affect a sensitive stomach –P&G introduced it as a welcome alternative to the acidy coffees on the market. They said studies proved yada yada.
In the press release, Folgers’ owner P&G estimated that stomach-friendly coffees could capture 10 percent of the $19 billion in coffee sales in the United States.
Folgers forgot that going out screaming about a whim was foolhardy at best. The blogosphere went nuts and people started asking each other: What the heck?
Then the bomb dropped: “It’s as much mythology as anything. The evidence that coffee is injurious to the stomach isn’t there,” said Dr. Joel E. Richter on page one of the New York Times. The Times got that from reading about it online!
Someone walking down the street saw the billboard, short-messaged a buddy who blogged about it. And Folgers – owner of $422 of the market for Instant - was branded a liar just below the fold of a newly-reduced (and pissed about it) newspaper, that was looking for corporations to call out.
In an instant (coffee), Folgers was branded a liar. Big and fat. A lot of Maxwell House was bought that month, you can be sure. Only 12 million jars of Simply Soft left the shelves, a low for Folgers. Nah. The low for Folgers was in forgetting that cynical = investigation when today’s consumers are now the most knowledgeable ever. Once you forget that, you’re a goner.
