Tag: Tide

In early 2018 Tide had a public relations crisis it never saw coming. A new internet trend was becoming popular with teens, where they would record themselves eating a Tide Pod and post the video online. As these videos got more popular they gained the name, “The Tide Pod challenge.” The goal of the challenge was to consume a whole Tide Pod. Obviously there are major health concern when eating a Tide Pod. They are full of chemicals which should not enter your body. One element that made this public relations crisis so unique, was that nothing Tide did started the problem. They did not post anything which resulted in backlash, one day teens just started to eat their product for attention. Tide had to stop this challenge for the health of their customers and to maintain a good public image.

According to Brooke Fisher Liu, Lucinda Austin, and Yan Jin, who are all professors in communication working for colleges across the United States, during a crisis you need to find the medium that the information is being spreed on, this includes traditional media, social media, or word of mouth. Once finding out which media the crisis is spreading on, the company should use that same medium to address or fix the crisis. In terms of the Tide Pod eating crisis, everything was happening on social media. Therefore, Tide used the same social media plat forms to communicate with it’s customers and address the situation.

Above is a graphic from the book, “Public Relations Strageigies and Tactics, Updated 11th Edition” by Dennis L. Wilcox, Glen T Cameron, and Bryan H. Reber. In this digram it shows many things a company in a PR crisis should do.

Tide did many of the things they recommended to start, they put the public first. They cared the most about their customers health which was at risk from eating the Tide Pods. They quickly went public about knowing the situation and wanted to inform the public about the dangers of consuming their product.

The next thing on the graphic is to have a spokesperson. Tide went out and got Rob Gronkowski, at the time the Patriots tight end, to represent the brand in this crisis. Gronkowski appeared in twitter videos urging people not to eat Tide Pods no matter what. According to William Comcowich, who works in media measurement and analytics in both tradition and social media, explains that Gronkowski was the perfect for this situation. Gronkowski is popular among teens both online and on the field. By picking Gronkowskui they were able to gain more attention by the desired market.

Throughout this crisis Tide was involved in the media to inform about the dangers and also trying to get ride of the challenge. They worked together with social plat forms such as you tube to remove videos of teens eating the pods to stop the spread of the challenged. They did not want to allow the kids to gain attention from eating them and encourage others to do the same. However, the graph states the cover up story can become the story, Tide did not cover anything up. They just acknowledged what was happening. They let the public know that teens were eating them, and that Tide was trying to help.

Tide did not want to be at fault of this situation because they believed they did nothing wrong. They were not marketing Tide Pods to be tasty or that they should be ate, so in their mind, Tide was not responsible for the issue happening. The Wharton University of Pennsylvania explained how Tide made sure they would not be at fault for the social media trend. Tide reminded them off all the safety features they have to discourage people from eating the pods. To start they have a bitter film that coasts each pod. This film taste awful, it is there to make people spit it out if they were to put the pod in their mouth. The other safety feature Tide Pods have is their lid requires an adult hand to open it. These safety features of cores apply more to preventing young kids from eating the pods. Tide believes it is common knowledge that all teens and adults know to not eat soap or other dangerous chemicals, but they still shared their safety features with the public to show they do not encourage the consumption of their product.

Throughout this crisis Tide handled them selves very well and avoided any back lash these teens could have caused. The public did not think it was Tides fault and that it was the dumb teens fault for eating something they obviously should not. The fad of Tide Pod eating also ended shortly after Tides involvement on social media. If Tide would not have done anything about this situation then they probably would have received backlash for not caring about the health of their customers. Tide handled this crisis very well and prevented any negative views to form about their company.

References

Wilcox D.L, Cameron G.T, and Reber B.H. (2015). Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics: 11 Edition. Pearson.