Tide Pod Crisis Case Study

Tide is an American brand of laundry detergent manufactured and marketed by Procter & Gamble. Procter & Gamble specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer health, and personal care and hygiene products and owns many brands including Tide. In February 2012 Procter & Gamble launched Tide Pods, a more convenient way of doing laundry.

In late 2017 Tide Pods appeared all over social media in a viral internet trend called the “Tide Pod Challenge.” This ‘challenge’ involved individuals filming themselves eating Tide Pods. The American Association of Poison Control received more than 220 reports that children and teenagers ingested these toxic pods resulting in mild to severe injury. CBS reported in 2018 that there had been 10 deaths from intentionally ingesting the pods. The "tide pod challenge" led to a crisis for the brand and parent company Procter and Gamble. Tide and Procter & Gamble responded through a social media PSA featuring NFL star Rob Gronkowski.

Procter & Gamble also responded with an op-ed written on the company website by the CEO, David Taylor. In the op-ed the CEO shared his thoughts on the matter stating how the challenge concerned him as he is the father of teenagers himself. Taylor also ensured in the statement of P&G’s efforts of keeping people safe, and encouraging good decisions by “teens and young adults.” Spokespeople for P&G also gave interviews with multiple different news outlets like TIME magazine and the Washington Post. All these artifacts are of significance because they were delivered via a PSA released to social media, statements directly from the CEO, and quotes from spokespeople through well-known news outlets including but not limited to TIME and the Washington Post.

To conclude, I believe Tide and Procter & Gamble responded to this crisis in an appropriate fashion. They used all forms of media and social to respond to warn people the dangers of consuming tide pods by mouth. The only thing I would've done differently is do a bigger social media campaign game. Tide's extent of their campaign on social media was to advertise the PSA of Rob Gronkowski on multiple sponsored posts. The company should've gone deeper with the social media, perhaps doing different posts to remind the public the dangers of consuming tide pods by mouth.