Cinnamon Toast Crunch replied, saying “We are sorry to see what you found! We would like to report this to our quality team and replace the box. Can you send us a DM to collect more details? Thanks!”
As Cabrera says, “what matters in this case is the safety and quality of the food”, and that is the message that the company has advanced in subsequent communications.
Any private personal response to Karp should have asked what kind of resolution or answer he was looking for, says Denise Lee Yohn, a brand leadership expert and author of the books “What Great Brands Do” and “Fusion: How Integrating Brand and Culture Capacita the Largest Companies in the World. ”
“Even if the company did not do what it wanted, they would at least understand what it would take for their concerns to be alleviated and be able to make an appropriate response,” she says.
In addition, the company’s public messages should not have challenged or refuted Karp’s claims, says Yohn. “Regardless of whether or not there is any real basis for their claims, it is perception that matters,” she says. “People trust other people more than companies – and they don’t like it when companies seem to intimidate or diminish other people.”
Before you answer, take the time to reflect on things, experts say.
The first public response came too quickly, says Gene Grabowski, a partner at public relations and public relations firm Kglobal, based in Washington, DC. “It’s very corporate and very instinctive,” and consumers are fed up with corporate language, he says. “They want to hear real people talking and companies have not yet learned to do so.”
What would Grabowski have suggested in that initial moment, what he calls the golden hour?
The team should have thought of the possible scenarios, including whether Karp is looking for advertising, whether it is a configuration, or whether the product has been tampered with at some point before reaching Karp’s bowl. Grabowski, who manages communications for more than 200 recalls of food and consumer products, says that, in his estimation, when it comes to items found in food, about a third of those things are rumors. “Of those that are real, few are from the factory because of quality control,” he says.
Grabowski suggested a potential answer that he thinks may have reached a better tone.
“I would have replied, ‘Wow! If that’s true, we really want to get to the bottom of it. We apologize, send us the box and the bag, we need to take a look at this because, like you, we want to get to the bottom of it. “