Smit Shah's Blog

Smit N Shah

Article # 7
P&G Damage Control Ad Campaign

The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is focused on providing branded consumer goods products. The Company is organized into three global business units: Beauty and Health; Household Care, and Gillette GBU. Its products are sold in over 180 countries around the world primarily through mass merchandisers, grocery stores, membership club stores and drug stores. P&G also owns IAMS and Eukanuba brand pet foods. In late feb the FDA (Food And Drug Administration) started getting complains about animals being sick. In end of Feb they started testing food items claimed to be the cause. In arround mid march more tests were conducted to test the food and tissues from animals affected by the food. By end of march there were lot of news about various companies recalling their products due to a possibility of contaminated contents.

Events like these cause great deal of concern for pet owners. If a brand recalls its products due to lack of quality, it leaves a bad impression on customers. The contamination has already been blamed for a lot of animal deaths. There are various animal associations that are protesting such carelessness. In such a situation, if a pet owner looses one of their pets to illness caused by their product, they will loose them as a customer. For this reason a lot of times, companies would start advertising to their customers, trying to gain back their trust and loyalty to their brand.

P&G made a good move by running those ad campaigns in papers. This would help win customer confidence and it may even help gain market share from their competitors who are not currently advertising their products. It is extremely important in case of events like the one they have on hand that their customers remain loyal to their brand. Also them being a big company allows them to have a big marketing budget for their campaign.

References:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/04/pet_food_recall_timeline.html
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003567366

// posted by WizKid @ 3:18 PM