 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
PR Fuel: The Alar Scare OpportunityOne of the watershed moments for the organic and natural foods industry came in 1989, after "60 Minutes" produced a report criticizing the Food & Drug Administration's oversight of chemicals used in foods. The segment featured a chemical called Daminozide, a food growth regulator used on apples and marketed under the name Alar by the Uniroyal Chemical Company. The report said that scientists had linked Alar to cancer in lab animals.Following the "60 Minutes" piece, demand for natural and organic foods untreated with pesticides and other chemicals jumped as school cafeterias yanked apples and people reportedly threw out apples and dumped apple juice down the drain. Uniroyal, now part of Chemtura, pulled Alar from the market and the Food & Drug Administration soon banned the chemical, which had been in use for over thirty years. The non-profit group The Natural Resources Defense Council was the driving force behind the campaign, utilizing actress Meryl Streep as a spokesperson. Lab tests by more than one organization eventually showed that a human would have to ingest an impossible quantity of apples or apple juice each day during his or her lifetime for the chemical to cause damage. The FDA, however, had considered Alar a human carcinogen before it became a public issue and later testing suggested a five in one million chance of cancer from long-term Alar ingestion. Additionally, some supermarket chains and at least two states had banned Alar before the "60 Minutes" broadcast. Apple growers, meanwhile, suffered in the near-term as sales of apples fell and they were forced to destroy crops already treated with Alar. A group of Washington apple growers unsuccessfully sued CBS over the "60 Minutes" report, claiming losses of $100 million. The group's lawsuit, however, eventually prompted more than a dozen states to put food libel laws on the books (as Oprah Winfrey found out in 1996 when she was famously sued by National Cattleman's Beef Association). The "Alar scare," as it has become known, continues to be a subject of debate. The food chemical industry, and other industries, often cite it to portray the public as susceptible to scare tactics from environmentalists and the media. These interests claim that sometimes third parties operating under the guise of unbiased watchdogs are really organizations supported by their competitors. Opponents of the food chemical industry point to the fact that Alar is an actual carcinogen, and that the "60 Minutes" piece was a broader indictment of how the government failed to protect people from dangerous chemicals, a larger issue that was important to raise. They say that Alar did pose a danger to humans and that the ends justify the means. The term "Alar scare" is sometimes used to describe reports or media campaigns that rely on pseudo-science or scare tactics. A year ago, some people said reports of a looming sub-prime crisis were nothing more than an Alar scare. Likewise, the deaths of dozens of pets by contaminated food last year caused a classic "Alar scare effect," as consumer demand for organic pet food quickly surged and then just as quickly subsided, according to a recent New York Times article. On the opposite end of the effect, apple sales returned to normal levels about four months after the "60 Minutes" report in 1989 and quickly began to grow again. The key to taking advantage of Alar scares is to move swiftly and provide the media and public with detailed information about why your product is safer than the product that is the subject of the scare. When the contaminated pet food issue arose last year, companies quickly moved to issue press releases and post notices on their websites that their food was safe. Retailers acted similarly, posting information in stores and pushing customers towards higher-priced - and higher-margin - organic products. One important aspect of playing up an Alar scare is to do so in a way that promotes your product without taking cheap shots at others. Consumers are in desperate need of an alternative, so what they want is information about why your product is safe. You can do so without denigrating a competitor's product. After all, the competitor's product is already under immense scrutiny. The online brokerage industry is currently in the midst of what could be construed as an Alar scare, and the industry is reacting appropriately. With the stock market as tumultuous as ever and obvious signs of a recession staring Americans in the face, online brokerage firms are now moving away from promoting stock trading and toward more defensive financial instruments and options. "We're running more television spots toward risk management, things to stay more disciplined," Jay Pestrichelli, senior vice president of the trader group at TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation, told The Associated Press recently. "For those bold enough to trade in this market, I've talked to traders who say you'll need to work twice as hard to make half as much money." This strategy is necessary because the bread and butter for online brokerages is stock trades. With investors pulling money out of the market, the online brokerages need to make their money outside of their core revenue-generating zone. Online brokers such as Ameritrade and Charles Schwab effectively used an Alar scare involving rival E*Trade last year when the latter company was in danger due to its mortgage business. With the threat - real or imagined - of a liquidity problem at E*Trade, the company's competitors used the opportunity to market and promote their stability. While it's obvious that the market is having problems these days, plenty of stocks will still post outstanding returns and intelligent investors can take advantage of bull markets by buying the stocks of good companies at cheap valuations and holding for the long-term. That, however, is not something that online brokers want to promote because they want people trading stocks, not buying and holding them. Not surprisingly, businesses have been taking advantage of Alar scare opportunities for years, well before the actual chemical hit the market. I recently finished reading "Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam," by Pope Brock. The book tells the tale of John R. Brinkley, a pioneer in the field of public relations, advertising media manipulation and hucksterism. Brinkley claimed to be a doctor, though he never graduated from an actual medical school. Seeing an opportunity in the craze of rejuvenation products following World War I, one spurred in Europe by the deaths of so many young men and in America by the influenza outbreak and the fear that America's white population would soon be overrun (he was not explicit in this regard at first but eventually utilized this fear as a promotion device), Brinkley opened a hospital in a small Kansas town and began implanting goat testicles in humans, claiming that the surgery provided "pep" to those in need. Over the next twenty years, Brinkley amassed a fortune by peddling useless surgeries and tonics. Along the way, he launched the most powerful radio station in America, came close to becoming the Governor of Kansas, developed the idea of equipping trucks with loud speakers to promote political candidates, re-invented the concept of advertising and killed or maimed possibly hundreds, if not thousands, of people with phony medical procedures and poisonous tonics. While Brinkley was certainly a charlatan, he was also brilliant when it came to understanding the part of people's brains that drives their fears. He marketed towards men in such a way that he made them fear their wives would leave them and towards women in a manner that appealed to their fears of living unhappy and unfulfilled lives (in and out of the bed). What's most intriguing about Brinkley's story is how Morris Fishbein, the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, shadowed the "doctor" throughout his career in an effort to debunk and destroy him. Fishbein was accused of using Alar scare tactics himself, an ironic twist considering that's how Brinkley built his dynasty. Alar scares are typically massive public relations headaches for those companies and organizations that produce and retail the targeted products. However, these same situations can provide other companies and organizations with great public relations opportunities.
|
 Subscribe and receive targeted press release announcements. Choose from several categories. Sign up today!  Media Searches Reference Tools Journalism Sites Public Relations PR Bookstore Organizations/Assns. Careers |