Crisis Communications for

Project owner: Nords PR Ukraine

Client: HiPP Ukraine

July 2009

Saving Reputation in 39 Hours

It all started with …• Wednesday night. HiPP is

informed that the Prosecution office sent a letter cancelling the certificates for a number of HiPP products

Which means: For HiPP: 6 SKUs should be taken off the shelves as early as Friday. For other producers: strangely enough, the problem faced only foreign producers Nestle (its top selling kids products) and Humana (up to 80% of assortment)For the Ukrainan market: up to 60% of both Ukrainian and foreign producers will disappear from the shelves

It all happened because …

In 2006, the Parliament passed the Law on child food banning the use of storch and wheat flour. Ukraine became the only country in the world banning these vitally important substances. Moreover, this contradicts the EU legislation.

For 2 years, the Prosecution office and other authorities paid no attention to this typo in the law, while producers tried to amend the legislation. However, in summer 2009 the Prosecution office decided to withdraw the quality certificates of foreign child food producers.

Which resulted in…

HiPP, a company with over a 100 year-history and stainless reputation became worried about losing the trust of its consumers:

1. With 40% Ukrainian newborns on artificial feeding, and almost 80% of babies from 6 months to 3 years old (over a million total) using special baby food as the main ration, this problem touches virtually every young family

2. At the sight of the products removed from the shelves, consumers could raise questions about the quality

3. Small children with certain disabilities fed by HiPP bio-organic products might not survive the change of the food

4. Mothers forced to add torch and flower wheat (absolutely necessary for proper development) from products not meant for children

Agency tasks:

1. Remove reputation risks: inform the society about the safety of HiPP products and that it is removed from the shelves based on a legislative mistake

2. Inform the decision-makers (Prosecution office, Parliament members, the Prime Minister), about the consequences of the current Law on child food and if possible to call for the Prosecution to withdraw its decision, and for the MPs – to amend the Law

Meanwhile, we only had 39 hours left…

1. Urgent press conference of key market players and its consequences

2. Communication with distributors and partners forced to remove products from the shelves

3. Preparing hotline operators4. Anti-crisis online campaign

Solution:

Over 39 hours (23 work hours, actually) we…

Drafted the press materials (press releases, fact sheets, bios, Q&A, etc.)

Invited experts and market players to the press conference Drafted and sent out letters for HiPP field trade

representatives, employees and partners explaining the situation and the action plan for the next few days

Drafted and uploaded a letter to the consumers to the company website explaining the situation, informed online communities

Shot a video reel with opinions of Kyiv moms about the child food ban, which we later showed to the media at the press conference

Conducted a media training for the company speakers Prepared talking points and Q&As for HiPP hotline operators Invited media to the press conference

Finally, the Press Conference

Topic «Reasons for the ban of 60% of child food assortment: Experts’ and producers’ Position»

4 speakers of top producers of child food (HiPP, Humana , Nestle, Semper)

5 experts, including heads of industry associations, representatives of health organizations and food quality authorities

36 journalists from 25 media (11 TV cameras)

At the press conference…

And child food ban hit the news…

The campaign resulted in:

Over 42 minutes of air time in 21 news spots at 11 TV channels

80 publications at print and online media

Active positive discussions of the issue at blogs/forums/communities

All key messages about the product safety and a legislative mistake reached the audiences

Results: a month later

«Here is a request for the Ministry of Economics and the Ministry of Agrarian Policy: start developing a law on the child food»Yulia Tymoshenko, Prime Minister

4 reasons why our project is worth the prize …

1. We removed the reputation risks: noone had any suspicions about the product

quality, while everyone was talking about a legislative mistake

2. We reached the legislative and executive authorities

3. The sales of the remaining HiPP products exceeded the planned deliverables

4. We used the best available communication tools and channels under

minimum time to reach the communication goals

Thank you for your attention!

Taisia StadnichenkoManaging PartnerNords PR Ukrainestadnichenko@nordspr.com.ua

?s