Have you seen the headlines circulating that recalls are up 400%? It came from a social media post citing a report the poster had seen, got picked up by news outlets, and within days people had decided that grocery shopping was dangerous. Sensationalism at its best. No one took the time to wonder whether the statistic was correct, or what it was actually describing. (More on that here.)
What interests me is the nature of viral information and how it affects recalls. The spread of that 400% statistic tells us something: people were already asking whether their food was safe, and they were not finding a clear answer from the companies making and selling it. So, they took the answer that was available.
Every company in this industry spends money and effort trying to prevent recalls, for the sake of public health and for their brand reputation. The same effort has to extend to communication. A recall that is handled slowly or communicated about vaguely becomes raw material for someone to explain. Communication that doesn’t come from the company will come from whoever is quickest and most confident, whether or not they have correct or complete information.
The uncomfortable part is that speed and confidence are often rewarded more than accuracy. Attention is a currency and a sensational claim has a huge return. We can’t expect that to change—people aren’t going to suddenly start caring about accuracy when click-bait is so lucrative. In this environment, transparency functions as prevention. When accurate information about a recall is timely, specific, and easy to find, there is less room for someone else to tell a different story. Communicating this way doesn’t eliminate the possibility of a viral moment, but it’s much harder to sustain when someone who goes looking for information about a recall can find the right information easily.
Importantly, accurate information has to exist in the places people look. Most consumers aren’t looking on a corporate website—they are on their phones, in a feed, watching a video someone reposted, talking to a friend. A press release and a banner on a product page are necessary, but they aren’t sufficient these days. If a recall is being discussed on social platforms and in consumer news coverage, company information needs to be there as well.
In the end, the 400% story passed quickly. What we can learn from it is valuable: a lot of people went looking for information about their food and found a number that fed their fear. The industry has more control over that outcome than it tends to assume. Virality is not inherently damaging. It spreads whatever information is available, which means the companies with the clearest communication have the most to gain from it.
