Tide pod crisis shows brands must reflect true personality on social media

Companies should widely communicate incorrect usage and consequential effects on social and other media most used by the consumers of a product

That social media is a double-edged sword for brands today is apparent from the sway it holds in generating trends that can make or mar reputation equally in the blink of an eye. Some of the consequences can also be unintended, as with the ongoing crisis that the P&G detergent brand Tide has had to grapple with thanks to the “Tide pod challenge” sweeping across social media in the West. While the jury is still out on whether the FMCG major has swiftly taken out a brand management exercise or not, experts point to lessons that corporates closer home can learn from the episode.

First, brands should try to foresee any inadvertent slips that can arise from making a product that tries to resemble the features of another product category with totally different intended use, explains Deepak Morada, chief executive of brand management agency Greensight Ventures.

So the Tide detergent pods, which are toxic but resemble edible candy, inadvertently led to a trend among children and teens that was dubbed as the “Tide pod challenge”. According to reports, thousands of children have been exposed to the pods and a handful of deaths resulted from it. The decision to make detergent pods look like candy and risk unintended consumption is therefore seen as debatable.

Chandru Chawla, executive vice-president, Cipla, agrees that a self-imposed boundary ought to be maintained by brands when it comes to packaging a product in accordance with the category it is in. “Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with the Tide pod product. But it can be concluded as a case of mis-branding,” Chawla says, adding that though not intentional, the presentation of the product could make it appear to be frivolous or playful.

As a corrective step, he suggests the company should not kill or recall the product but rebrand and repackage it to reflect its true brand personality.

Morada adds that any delay or denial of a crisis only increases the harmful fallout. 

“Intervention in this case would be to immediately pull the product off the retail shelves and distribution pipelines, and replace them with a product with features designed to avoid any unintended misuse. New packaging should be clearly labelled to avoid confusion,” he says, adding that a company should incentivise and bear the costs of product returns from consumers in this scenario.

He further says that companies should widely communicate the incorrect use and consequential effects on social and other media most used by the consumers of a product. “Reach out to the very social media platforms being used to hype such dangerous challenges and ask them to blank out messages relating to such challenges.” Lastly, companies faced with such crises should set up a 24X7 helpline to assist any cases where a victim may need emergency medical intervention.

Tide has been credited with taking corrective steps such as coating the pods with bitter taste and making them harder to open, besides also working with the likes of YouTube to quickly remove the “challenge” videos and ramping up messaging on social media including hiring influencers to convey the right message.
 

N Chandramouli, CEO, Trust Research Advisory, reasons that the pods were so designed with cosmetic changes to enthuse people to wash clothes. As a result the “challenge” was not foreseen. Tide looked to address the woman of the house with the product, but just as a television set is meant for a family unit the pods too can have some effect on other members of the family, he says. He argues that the company was not quick to understand the characteristics of a new generation of children for whom social media approval for their actions matters more than a real interaction, and therefore slow to react to the problem that emerged.

“In any crisis, the first issue is always over-disclosure rather than under-disclosure,” he says, adding that it may also mean changing or pulling back the product entirely. “If brands want to regain trust of their customers, they have to be quick, effective and incisive, especially if there are deaths,” he stresses. Second, consequent actions such as disclaimers are only seen as legally correct statements that must be supported with follow-up action.

Ayan Banik, head, brand strategy, Cheil India, points out that because of social media, brands are caught in a catch-22 situation. “Firstly, as a medium it is always-on. If you are not seen you are relegated from the top of mind, so there is a constant pressure to be visible for brands,” he says, adding that at a time the relevance of social media is also being questioned in terms of how much they can harm or help brands, such platforms remain predominantly for entertaining people as opposed to brand building. “As a result, the medium tonality here is very edgy and it’s a non-serious zone meant mainly for youngsters,” he adds.

As a result, light content meant to engage an audience on social media works for only a certain category of brands, and not for classical FMCG brands, points out Banik. For FMCG brands such as P&G, therefore, keeping watch over the messaging conveyed in social media, even if unintended, is even more critical.