When TikTok goes wrong
Do you have a PR plan?
3-min read
The scary thing about TikTok and other social media platforms is how fast it moves. People use these platforms as a news source. So, when something bad gets posted about your brand, you better have an action plan ready.
I know I’ve been harping on food safety in recent posts. This article is about what to do if your food safety measures failed and the worst has happened – people getting sick from your food.
I’m a big fan of Daily Harvest, the plant-based D2C smoothie and bowl company, (I’ve written about their partnership in The Almond Project, a regenerative project with Treehouse Almonds) but when their French Lentil & Leek Crumbles were recalled in June, things didn’t go so well for them on the PR front.
Recalls are never good, but how you handle them can make them less bad. Especially for food safety concerns, being quick and honest with your response goes a long way. Judging by Daily Harvest’s early actions, it was pretty clear they didn’t have a good plan for how to handle a crisis of this nature.
What happened
Daily Harvest sent out packages of the product to influencers and the media in May, including to Cosmopolitan Creative Director, Abby Silverman who after eating it immediately got sick.
A month later she got a mass email from Daily Harvest urging people to dispose of the item.
People were talking about it on Reddit by then, but there was nothing on Daily Harvest’s social about it. That’s when Abby took to TikTok and her video went viral.
Daily Harvest initiated a recall on June 17th but didn’t post anything until two days later. The post was criticized because it didn’t reference the recall in the caption – only said “important message … link in bio” which came across as not taking it seriously enough/trying to bury it.
An unusual recall
It’s important to note that the Daily Harvest French Lentil & Leek Crumbles outbreak did not have a normal foodborne illness cause. This might be one of the reasons the brand took so long to react. Their microbiological lab results would not have identified any pathogens in the product. They eventually determined that tara flour, an additive ingredient, was the problem. Tara flour is a bit of a novel ingredient, and although tara gum is GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) by the FDA, tara flour is not. It is suspected that something chemical, not microbiological, contaminated the tara flour. The FDA is still investigating. (Another interesting thing to know is the FDA does not currently regulate meal delivery companies, which is what Daily Harvest is considered.)
All press is good press if you do it right
It’s difficult to get your reputation back in the very competitive space of premium food, so when something goes wrong, you can turn the attention to how well you are handling things. Daily Harvest, as a digitally native, bougie brand that built itself on IG has set a high bar when it comes to online user experience, and that has to include reputation management. When they didn’t immediately respond to the chatter, it hurt their brand. Even if it needs more investigation, consumers are much more forgiving when you are transparent about what is going on.
Tips on reputation management:
Reach out to your consumer where they are (social, news, text, email)
Explain the situation as plainly as possible
Concern yourself with your consumer’s well-being and their perspective
Tell the truth and move on
You need not go at this alone. First, consult with a regulatory compliance expert like Tim Lombardo at EAS Consulting or Valerie Madamba at FoodWit who can help you with prevention strategies and communicating with the FDA in the event of a recall. Then map out a PR response plan that is fill-in-the-blank easy to implement by your marketers and social media handler. And lastly, run everything by your legal counsel so you can act fast if the worst erupts.
All my best,
Jennifer
…if we look back over the last 1,000 recalls caused by pathogens, many were announced by companies with extremely sophisticated food safety experts, plans and environmental monitoring programs. In virtually every instance, the companies involved were, in fact, detecting pathogens on intermittent basis, but failing to adequately respond.