Progresso appears to be dealing with a crisis at the moment with regards of BPA, or other words the industrial chemical bisphenol A, which has been reported to be in their cans. BPA has been linked to several different health issues such as infertility and cardiovascular disease. Here is some more information related to BPA from NIH in case you are interested.
For a brand that focuses on being one of quality foods, this is something you do not want to have attached to one of your food products.
Of course, with this particular crisis, people were gathering on the Progresso Facebook page voicing their concerns, comments, and feelings toward this issue with Progresso. Shel Holtz also wrote a post regarding this crisis on his blog and discussed how the company responded to these comments and reactions to the news of BPA in their cans.
What I liked about this post from Holtz was he went step by step into what were some of the issues and challenges in sharing these posts or URLs on Facebook related to this crisis. This does bring in a new factor for crisis communicators working in social media have to be aware of since this may cause some additional challenges in sharing timely information and overcoming these barriers.
There are a few things that definitely caught my attention with this particular crisis. First, when you are looking at a food safety crisis, you would expect bloggers or reporters to cite established and credible sources of information that have been traditionally referenced in this area. So, for food safety – you would expect to hear insights or reports from the FDA, USADA, or CDC in the article. However, the article that Holtz referenced in his blog post came from Mother Jones, who first reported the news about BPA in cans in an article that appeared in 2010. This was extremely similar to what I found in my focus groups during my dissertation research at the University of Tennessee (it’s a big paper :)).
Second, I was surprised to see that Progresso (who is part of General Mills) was of course responding to the crisis on Facebook, but I was not able to find any statement or acknowledgement on their main corporate page OR corporate blog. While these are considered to be traditional social media platforms, there should be a statement and link to additional resources for more information about BPA.
The other thing that appeared not to go over too well with audience members of the Facebook page is the prepared statements that were cut and pasted in the comment box to respond to the concerns being raised. While it is good to have prepared statements, but companies and brands need to be authentic and respond to each personal concern with authenticity. People not only want to have their voices being heard, but they also want to feel they can trust the source and are talking to someone real, not an automated robot.
What does this food and social media crisis tell us? More work needs to be done in the area of credible sources in food safety crises as well as how to best prepare our communication professionals and brands to be authentic and help restore the trust as a source in a time of crisis.
Hope you all are having a great day.
Best Wishes,
Karen
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