PR Strategy – No “Spitting Wars”

It’s a fairly common strategy to call out your competitor’s flaws (perceived and/or actual) in a public forum (e.g. Progresso/Campbell’s Soup Wars, AT& T/Verizon’s map dispute, I’m a Mac/PC). Though this strategy often leads to highly publicized, drawn out and costly litigation, it has also yielded improved sales for some companies.

There’s an alternative to the “spitting war” strategy. Here‘s the case study.

Most consumers don’t realize that “fresh, natural” chicken can include products that have been injected or plumped with sodium phosphate, cane juice, corn syrup and other “enhancers.” Our client, Foster Farms, the leading poultry producer on the West Coast, had always differentiated itself as producing truly 100 percent, natural, fresh poultry without any added ingredients. The other guys were injecting their fresh and natural-labeled chicken with salt water, ostensibly for better flavor but in fact adding weight and thus the total cost – and sodium content -- to consumers. With labeling loopholes, though, most consumers didn’t know the difference.

Foster Farms had enough, but how do you out your competitors’ deceptive labeling practices and market that without painting yourself defensive and y whiny in the process? The answer – with humor, with award-winning TV advertising and, not least, with effective public relations working on all fronts.

Our job was to help consumers understand what they were getting – or not getting – when they bought fresh chicken. We informed them about an issue they should be concerned about without scare tactics or shock value. Our approach was credible, reasonable and caring rather than pointed or aggressive

The upshot – Consumers remained loyal to the premium Foster Farms brand even in a tough economy. And the campaign, as lauded in an L.A. Times editorial (and reprinted in the Sacramento Bee and other dailies), won praise for its integrity.

“Foster Farms, which developed an entire marketing campaign around the fact that it does not plump its chicken, is calling on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to withhold the “all natural” label from enhanced chicken.

“Although we hate to take sides in corporate competition, we think Foster Farms is right. If anything, its campaign is too tame. It's tempting to imagine a label that identifies heavily enhanced chicken as "chicken-like product, with X% real chicken." At the very least, enhanced meats should be conspicuously labeled as such, and the list of added ingredients should appear in larger type. Shoppers should know at a glance what they're really getting.”