Shrimp In Your Breakfast Cereal Anyone? How NOT To Handle A PR Crisis.

“To admit that you were wrong is to admit that you are wiser now than you were before.”

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Have you been following the Cinnamon Toast Shimp sh*t storm this week in the media?

This revolting discovery and General Mills response is an excellent example of how NOT to handle a customer complaint on social media. And, most alarmingly how the reputation and brand credibility of a 165 year old company with operating revenue of 17.68 billion, can go up in a single tweet.

Unfortunately, I'm not exaggerating.

Here’s What Happened

A guy called Jensen Karp was about to pour his daily bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch into his bowl. He made this alarming discovery, and of course, tweeted it immediately.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch then replied with their tweet, which has to rank as one of the worst responses I have ever seen. They claimed the objects in question weren't shrimp tails but an "accumulation of sugar."

Right. 

The next day, the brand started playing the blame game, tweeting that the incident didn’t happen at its facility.

But by then, General Mills’s credibility had been completely obliterated.

I have no idea who was behind those tweets or who authorized General Mills' response. But their arrogant reply and refusal to accept any responsibility will cost the company greatly.

Building trust in a brand takes a long time, and, as you can see, it can be destroyed instantly.  At the end of the day, that's what a brand is – trust. 

Yes, the discovery of shrimp in sugary, squared cereal is unfortunate.

Honestly, who knows what really goes on behind closed doors at any food manufacturer.

I once found thick black bristles poking out in a dog biscuit.

I was seven at the time.

Outraged, I wrote a letter to the manufacturer including the offensive biscuits for their own “ scientific testing."

The CEO was kind enough to send me a letter back, with an apology and a statement to the effect of "we have no idea how this happened ... this is not the standard we adhere to ... thank you for bringing it to our attention ... we will launch an internal investigation ... and here's a free large bag of dog treats for the inconvenience.”

That was a pretty good response.

By the CEO replying, it showed my seven-year-old self that they took my complaint seriously. And I was happy my dog got a free bag of treats.

General Mills, by contrast, did none of this.

Here’s What General Mills Should Have Done

1) They should have never questioned what they were seeing. If the customer says it's shrimp, or it’s boar bristles, the customer sees what they see. 

2) They should have acknowledged the issue in their initial tweet response, apologized, and told everyone what they would be doing next – namely launching an internal investigation to ensure nothing like this would happen again.

3) Then the conversation should have been taken offline to talk more in-depth with the aggrieved customer and find a solution.  Pending the investigation outcome, this would need another carefully orchestrated PR response that again took responsibility and, most importantly, talked about what measures the company is taking to ensure it never happens again. 

The biggest PR lesson in this is - take responsibility, communicate, fix the problem, communicate again. Every business, large and small hits speed bumps. The question isn’t IF one of your customers will find “shrimp in their cereal.” It’s when.

Remember this golden PR lesson and your brand can actually emerge with more trust than it had before…