Nuggets of Wisdom: Comparing the Responses of Boar’s Head and McDonald’s to their Respective Food Safety Recalls

By Nate Johnson

Managing Director

By Nate Johnson, Managing Director

News broke on Tuesday that an E. Coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s’ popular Quarter Pounder hamburger led to the death of one person and sickened at least 48 across ten states, sending the company’s PR machine into overdrive. So far, McDonald’s has handled the situation about as well as any organization in its position could hope to.

Given our critique earlier this week of Boar’s Head’s mishandling of its recent listeria outbreak, we wanted to explore why and how McDonald’s has been more successful in mitigating damage to its brand under nearly identical circumstances.

Takeaways

• When crafting the first communication in the wake of a crisis, it is vital to identify your most important stakeholders and leverage the means of communication that will best resonate with them.

• If a company facing a crisis establishes that the incident runs counter to its values and priorities, and it then takes corrective action in a manner that further demonstrates the company’s commitment to upholding those values, the crisis can actually bolster, rather than damage, the company’s reputation.

• Humans connect better with one another than with corporate brands, so assigning a company leader to take responsibility and serve as the face of a crisis response can help ensure key stakeholders are more receptive to the company’s messaging.

• It’s important for companies in crisis to balance their legal objectives with their reputational ones and find ways to communicate empathy without invoking legal liability – especially when all the facts are not yet known.

Choosing the right communications channel

Boar’s Head’s initial communications consisted of a highly technical press release and a boiler plate media statement that Boar’s Head was “cooperating fully with government authorities and conducting [its] own investigation into this incident,” neither of which was effective in connecting with stakeholders or putting them at ease.

In contrast, McDonald’s disclosed the news by cross-posting a brief but detailed internal employee note to its corporate blog that included a video address from McDonald’s USA President Joe Erlinger. This made for a much more accessible and compelling first communication that focused on conveying the most important details in a digestible, human manner.

Where Boars’ Head’s press release felt overwhelming and overly corporate, reading like the disclosures segment of a prescription drug advertisement, McDonald’s communications were sharp, to the point, and used channels and formats that were more familiar and comfortable to their target audience.

Anchoring response in corporate values

Boar’s Head’s initial press release disclosing the recall was over 1000 words long, and yet none of those 1000 words indicated how the company felt about the recall, or how it fit within the context of the company’s values. Granted, this press release did follow a format required by the USDA, but the company could have supplemented it with additional communications that more clearly articulated their position on the incident. Instead, their data dump release left customers wondering whether the company’s health code violations were just par for the course for an organization that made no mention of prioritizing food safety or the well-being of its customers.

McDonald’s, on the other hand, started with their values. The first two lines of their cross-posted internal message read:

“Across the McDonald’s System, serving customers safely in every single restaurant, each and every day, is our top priority and something we’ll never compromise on. It is why we are taking swift and decisive action following an E. Coli outbreak in certain states.” 

McDonald’s made clear the outbreak was directly at odds with its corporate principles and that its rapid response was driven by a desire to uphold those principles, eliciting comments like the below on Joe Erlinger’s video address:

Taking ownership

In responding to the listeria outbreak, Boar’s Head has not attributed its statements or communications to a specific spokesperson. Even the customer letter that the company issued a month after the initiation of the recall was signed by the company, rather than the CEO or another corporate leader.

McDonald’s attached two credible spokespeople to its crisis. North America Chief Supply Chain Officer Cesar Piña was listed as the author of the internal message, and USA President Joe Erlinger appeared in the video. By positioning two leaders front and center and having them take ownership of the incident, the company’s response came across as much more genuine than Boar’s Head.

Humans connect better with one another than they do with brands, so assigning a leader to be the face of a company’s crisis response – someone who does not skirt responsibility or make excuses – can be an effective means of rebuilding credibility with consumers.

Communicating empathy

This was perhaps the only category in which McDonald’s joined Boar’s Head in falling short. As in Boar’s Head’s case, McDonald’s initial communications failed to express empathy for those who have so far been impacted by the outbreak, including the individual who died after contracting E. coli.

As we speculated in our article regarding Boar’s Head, this may stem from concerns that an expression of empathy could be interpreted as an admission of guilt and carry legal liability. However, we believe there are ways to communicate empathetically without admitting fault, and it felt strange for McDonald’s to emphasize its values so aggressively without ever mentioning the impacted individuals. This sentiment was even raised by one commenter on Joe Erlinger’s video:

A little can go a long way – even a simple, “We are aware of the reports of individuals falling ill from E. Coli and want to share our heartfelt sympathies to those suffering from this terrible illness” would help offset any perception that McDonald’s response was heartless or lacking in empathy.

Looking ahead

At this stage, the score card is clearly in McDonald’s favor, as it bested Boar’s Head in all but one of the above categories. However, it can take months for a crisis of this magnitude to play out, with many more opportunities for missteps.

It remains to be seen whether McDonald’s can maintain the largely positive momentum from its initial response, or if the situation will worsen and make long-term reputational harm all but inevitable. To avoid further damage, it is critical that McDonald’s clearly communicates its final findings regarding the source of the outbreak, as well as the steps it is taking to ensure that another, similar outbreak does not occur in the future.