“We carefully watch the nutrition of all of our menu items.”
Money-hungry bank CEOs, unmotivated auto manufacturers, and an American public ready to clean house dominate news coverage. Certainly, now is not a good time to be a corporation. The idea of a trustworthy CEO or a company with the consumer’s best interest in mind sounds more like something out of a Sesame Street than the reality of Wall Street.
But it’s that perception that makes correctly tackling the salt issue so important to a company’s future. And diverting the answer with PR speak isn’t going to make it go away.
Eric Dezenhall, a career crisis management consultant and author of Nail ’Em and Damage Control, advises companies facing ingredient attacks to answer the two questions most important to their consumers: Am I going to be OK, and What is the company going to do about it?
“Those are the two things people want to know and that everything comes back to,” Dezenhall says. “The answer to the question, ‘Am I going to be OK, and what are you doing about it’, is not ‘We here at Smith & Jones Foods care deeply about the consumer.’ That’s not the answer, and that is the first place these companies go, and it doesn’t answer the question.”
According to Dezenhall, a tendency to dodge media and consumer questions only further incriminates a company. Between the Internet and the increasing interest in health news, consumers are demanding answers. When companies do not present a clear, concise plan of action to the media, they risk being crucified by the nightly news.
“Reporters have to feed the beast,” Dezenhall says. “They look at a Web site to figure out the issue, and if no one is explaining the issue, they’re going to assume something funny is going on.”
To avoid this type of situation, Dezenhall says companies have to first decide whether they think sodium content in their food warrants legitimate health concerns. “If this is a complete overreaction, say so,” he says. From there, companies need to educate the public about the ingredient’s use on their menus. “Where people get outraged is when, ‘You mean to tell me that X is in this product, and I didn’t know about it?’ And that’s especially problematic for the quick-service industry,” he says.
If the concern is legitimate, chains can defuse consumer attacks by offering other menu options. If sodium cannot be removed from signature offerings without altering the taste, Dezenhall advises chains to tell consumers how to counteract their salt intake. “Provide guidance on how much is OK,” he says. “If you have high cholesterol or blood pressure, eat X amount versus Y amount.”
A good crisis management plan is centered on honesty, not PR. Yes, saying ‘Consumers don’t want healthy foods’ is truthful, but it also avoids responsibility. “There is a tension between providing consumers what they want on one hand and demonstrating, at the very least, an awareness of a health concern,” Dezenhall says. “The answer isn’t one or the other. Quick-serves have to do both.”