- Hi, and welcome to The Recall Institute.
In AON's 2017 Global Risk Management Survey,
senior executives from a range of industries
again identified reputation risk
as their number one concern.
For managers in food and consumer goods companies,
the leading cause of reputation and brand damage,
and the one that can have the largest impact,
is a product-related incident or a product recall
that escalates into a brand crisis.
You've worked tirelessly for years to build your brand,
a key asset for any food or consumer goods company.
Have you noticed, however, that even
large companies can get into a crisis?
Consumers start deserting their brands, sales drop,
and sometimes don't recover, and all that hard work
brand-building starts to erode.
Smaller companies may not survive.
Lots of food and consumer goods companies
have product recall plans and crisis management plans,
but the key question is, will they work
when you actually have an incident?
Hi, my name's Steve Hather and I'm director
of The Recall Institute.
I've been involved in incident management, product recall,
and crisis management for over 25 years,
and in my experience, most plans don't work.
And there are three primary reasons.
Firstly, they're just too long.
So let me ask you a question: how long is your
current product recall and crisis management plan together?
If your answer is more than two pages,
then it's unlikely that your team
will read it in a potential crisis.
In a potential crisis, you don't have time to read essays.
You need short, on-point guidance in the form of a checklist
to help you get through that.
The second reason is, they don't provide the right guidance.
Most plans provide lots of details in a few important areas.
Product recall plans, for example, provide details
around the logistics of a product recall.
Crisis management plans are generally
better described as communication guides.
Neither plan provides enough guidance in the key processes
that will actually keep you out of a crisis,
particularly assessment, strategy,
and a robust framework for those communications.
The third reason they don't work is they're not integrated.
In a product-related incident, the product recall plan
is usually the domain of the quality manager.
Once the incident starts escalating,
it's often a different team that takes over,
and they're focused on communications:
how do we make this situation sound better?
In a fast, escalating incident,
the CEO can find themselves in a dilemma,
surrounded by valid, well-meaning,
but often conflicting advice, the plan's often forgotten.
They bunker with a PR consultant,
and out comes the tired old corporate PR fluff
that's more likely to get you into a crisis
than keep you out of one.
Particularly when it comes to social media.
In our experience working with large multinational companies
through small businesses for over 25 years,
a structured seamless process,
a 10-step process, from identifying the incident
through investigation, assessment, strategy,
communication, implementing, and improving,
is needed to keep you out of a crisis.
This is a process that not only works effectively
for product recalls, but can really be used
for any type of incident.
If you'd like a copy of our free guide
to the 10 key elements of effective crisis prevention,
to reduce the risk of incidents
and product recalls to your reputation,
you can click the download now button below.
Review it, discuss it with your team.
If you agree it makes sense, I'll send you
some further free resources that you can use right now
to protect your brand and prevent a crisis
by effective incident and product recall management.
Don't delay this any longer.
Waiting until you're in a crisis
to find out that your plan doesn't work
could be disastrous for your business and your brands.
If you thought this information was useful,
please give me a thumbs-up below.
If you know someone in the food or consumer goods industries
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on product recall and crisis management,
and if you have a question you'd like answered
please add it to the comments section
and I'll put it on my list for future recall Q and As.
Thanks very much for watching.