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Brands take note: what the E Coli outbreak can teach us about crisis communications

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

June 8, 2011 | 4 min read

Embattled EU agriculture ministers fighting a losing media battle over the E Coli outbreak. Crisis management specialist Paul Smith from Citypress examines why.

I’ve always been a bit of a salad dodger. Don’t like it, rarely eat it.

Turns out I’ve been joined by millions of others this week as Europe’s E Coli outbreak reaches a toll of 23 dead and over 2,400 ill.

Without a clear source for the poisoning – cucumbers, tomatoes and beansprouts have all been accused – the multi billion euro salad sector is feeling first hand how the public reacts to a food scare that no-one ‘owns’.

There is normally a corporation to target in such situations; a brand, major manufacturer or restaurant which takes the focus and is expected to provide the answers.

But this issue has gone international and most politicians are better at the blame game than they are at crisis management. We have seen Germany blaming Spanish cucumbers - seemingly with little foundation - Spain demanding, and then refusing, compensation and Russia banning EU fruit and veg imports (incidentally, even if your press conference is a serious issue involving cucumbers, it’s probably best not to wave one around in a comedy fashion for the duration).

Each new avenue of investigation simply lays waste to the immediate financial future of farmers who grow that product. Like a media locust destroying a crop, any fresh accusation guarantees a sales slump, even when the hunt for the source moves on.

Food scares panic consumers - it’s why the media love them. Forget the statistical chance of you suffering the salad death, here’s a scientific picture of an unrelated strain of E Coli, magnified until it looks like a killer Tic-Tac.

Brands take note – this outbreak is a model for how a crisis can devastate your market through unchecked association and why, when a food scare threatens your sector, it is far better to have your responses prepared and give media what answers you have rather than simply let a crisis play out and make no comment.

If your supply chain is as clean and traceable as can be then let your retail customers and consumers know. Defend your brand/product position but let your trade body deal with the wider questions about your sector. You don’t want to become the industry spokesperson for a crisis, that’s why you pay fees to trade federations.

Unfortunately, the EU’s salad farmers are typically non-media savvy producers who are letting agriculture ministers field the growing media interest. As America claims a first victim of the outbreak, this collectively passive approach could lead to countries following Russia’s lead and sparking a BSE-style shut down on vegetable imports. Bear in mind that some estimates claim the global cost of BSE was $50 billion and, at its height, put 300,000 jobs at risk.

The EU is already accepting that losses are inevitable and proposing several million euros of emergency aid for farmers.

As a radical solution they could consider spending it on as much F1 and snooker sponsorship as they can before veg advertising is also banned from The Crucible or the side of Vettel’s car. After all, smoking related diseases are set to kill 6.5 million people a year by 2015 and yet I’m willing to bet that there’s a degree of irrational crossover within the group shunning salad and those who spark up.

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