It is your worst nightmare as a retailer, it is your biggest trading season and you have a product recall in place. That is where Lindt has found itself this week.
They said of the recall “We were recently made aware that elements of peanut butter were found in the 16g milk egg, and have immediately confirmed the issue and informed FSANZ and the NSW Food Authority. We are placing a voluntary recall on all potentially affected products, as any consumers who have a peanut allergy or intolerance may have a reaction if they consume the products in question.”
Crisis Comms
Not pleasant indeed BUT the upside is they have handled the crisis well. They have updated recall information on their Twitter and Facebook pages and on their website there is a well labelled Product Recall area. My only disappointment was when they mentioned updates on their Twitter and Facebook pages (within their media statement) the words were not hyperlinked for ease of use .
I am also interested to see if they are going to use the new Facebook functionality to use the Outreach feature (pasting comments on other organisation pages alerting them to the dangers) I would suggest starting with family pages such as Essential Baby or Kidspot where mums are online.
Reputation
With regard to their reputation, interestingly fans on their Facebook page were not negative but actually thought nuts could be a nice addition to the chocolate- showing their customer loyalty. Some of the comments included:
would love for some to be sent my way 🙂 no nut allergies here… waste not
haha! YEAH we dont mind nuts! give it to us!!
All up a good performance with a little tweaking it would be eggcellent (ok couldn’t resist!) 😉
Postscript
After I had written this blogpost I was contacted by a woman who had a severe allergy reaction to the Lindt eggs, and she had found it difficult for Lindt to take responsibility – She told her story to 3AW Listen to the interview.
Author Bio
Digital Democracy is a Sydney based digital communications consultancy by Jenni Beattie.
Jenni is a senior communications strategist who has worked across advertising, public relations, market research and media. She has worked for companies such as News Ltd, CARMA International, McCann Erickson Advertising, Cancer Council NSW, Media Monitors, The Digital Edge and Network PR.