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Bad Buzz Travels Fast as Companies Gasp - The Lead Paint in Children’s Products Crisis
What’s as puzzling as the how many children’s products are being recalled for lead paint contamination is how companies’ (Fisher-Price, Mattel, Toys R Us etc.) Quality, PR and Marketing were and are asleep at the wheel.
For starters, who was ultimately responsible within the children’s product manufacturer for monitoring the quality and safety of these products? How is PR saturating online and offline media with damage control stories (as I haven’t heard or see any when I see the barrage of Toys R Us concerned consumers venting online). How is marketing reaching out to their customers (assuming they know who all their customers are) to reassure them?
A Google search for “toys r us lead paint” (the suggestion in the Google search bar) shows the #1 search result (out of 1.9 million) as a Toys R Us sponsored search ad which simply takes you to their corporate web site (to buy more lead tainted toys?) with nothing addressing the lead paint crisis on the home page. Although near the bottom of the page they do have a safety information link which takes you to a boilerplate safety letter from the CEO which doesn’t mention lead paint.
Had companies like Toys R Us being using Brand Buzz Monitoring they could be more Word-of-Mouth proactive, understand the content and extent of what people are saying about Toys R Us to others and reassure consumers where they are having conversations. Hopefully they’ll read this post. Better yet, I plan to contact them to see how they’re monitoring their Buzz. I’ll report on our progress.
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