By now you are all probably aware of that big fiasco experienced by ConAgra when they set up a dinner hosted by a celebrity chef and a food industry analyst and invited food bloggers to attend, offering extra tickets for giveaway purposes. The attendees were promised a delicious four-course meal, and Mr. Duran’s “one-of-a-kind sangria.” A surprise was also promised…read the following article from the New York Times.
Sotto Terra, the invitation said, was “an intimate Italian restaurant” where attendees would enjoy a “delicious four-course meal,” Mr. Duran’s “one-of-a-kind sangria,” and learn about food trends from a food industry analyst, Phil Lempert. The invitation continued that upon confirming — for one of five evenings beginning Aug. 23 — bloggers would receive an extra pair of tickets as a prize for readers and that the dinner would include “an unexpected surprise.”
The surprise: rather than being prepared by the chef, the lasagna they were served was Three Meat and Four Cheese Lasagna by Marie Callender’s, a frozen line from ConAgra Foods. Hidden cameras at the dinners, which were orchestrated by the Ketchum public relations unit of the Omnicom Group, captured reactions to the lasagna and to the dessert, Razzleberry Pie, also from Marie Callender’s.
“Our intention was to really have a special evening in a special location with Chef George Duran,” said Stephanie Moritz, senior director of public relations and social media at ConAgra.
“The twist at the end was not dissimilar with what brands like Pizza Hut and Domino’s have done in the recent past with success,” she said, referring to hidden-camera advertising campaigns. ConAgra expected to use the footage for promotional videos on YouTube and its Web site, and for bloggers to generate buzz when they wrote about being pleasantly surprised.
But it was the marketers, not the diners, who were in for the biggest surprise.
The hidden camera is a staple in commercials, from Folger’s ads in the 1970s and 1980s where diners in upscale restaurants unknowingly enjoyed instant coffee instead of the house brew, to more recent Pizza Hut ads, where diners, again in upscale restaurants, unknowingly enjoyed pasta from Pizza Hut.
But while consumers tend to laugh along with the ruse, ConAgra was about to learn that bloggers, who often see themselves as truth-seeking journalists, find the switcheroo less amusing, especially when it entails them misleading their readers beforehand.
“Our entire meal was a SHAM!” wrote Suzanne Chan, founder of Mom Confessionals, in a blog post after the event. “We were unwilling participants in a bait-and-switch for Marie Callender’s new frozen three cheese lasagna and there were cameras watching our reactions.”
On FoodMayhem.com, a blog by Lon Binder and Jessica Lee Binder, Mr. Binder wrote that during a discussion led by Mr. Lempert before the meal, Mr. Binder spoke against artificial ingredients while Ms. Binder mentioned being allergic to food coloring. When the lasagna arrived, Ms. Binder was served a zucchini dish, while Mr. Binder was served lasagna.
“We discussed with the group the sad state of chemical-filled foods,” wrote Mr. Binder. “And yet, you still fed me the exact thing I said I did not want to eat.” (Among the ingredients in the lasagna: sodium nitrate, BHA, BHT, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate.)
On the evening she attended, Cindy Zhou wrote on her blog, Chubby Chinese Girl, that during the pre-meal discussion, she “pointed out that the reason I ate organic, fresh and good food was because my calories are very precious to me, so I want to use them wisely.”
She continued, “Yet they were serving us a frozen meal, loaded with sodium.” (An 8-ounce serving of the lasagna contains 860 milligrams of sodium, 36 percent of the recommended daily allowance.)
“I’m NOT their target consumer and they were totally off by thinking I would buy or promote their highly processed frozen foods after tricking me to taste it,” Ms. Zhou wrote.
As negative comments on blogs, Twitter and Facebook grew, ConAgra canceled the fifth evening and vowed not to use the hidden-camera footage for promotional purposes.
“Once we sensed it was not meeting attendees’ expectations, that’s where we stopped, we listened and we adjusted,” said Ms. Moritz, of ConAgra.
“It was never our intention to put any bloggers or their guests in an uncomfortable position and for that we are sorry,” she said, adding that the brand subsequently offered to reimburse attendees for such expenses as cab fare and baby-sitting.
Still, “most attendees had a fun evening” and in a survey, 62.5 percent of participants indicated having a favorable impression of Marie Callender’s, Ms. Moritz said.
Peter Shankman, author of “Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work — And Why Your Company Needs Them,” said Ketchum should have safeguarded ConAgra.
“You pay a PR agency not only to get you press but also for counsel,” Mr. Shankman said. “Someone at Ketchum should have said, ‘I know this sounds fun, but we’re duping bloggers and they might get angry so we might want to rethink this.’ ”
There were “a high percentage of people who actually appreciated the event,” said Jackie Burton, director of corporate communications at Ketchum. “But we also understand that there were people who were disappointed and we’re sorry — we apologize that they felt that way.”
The promotion was “unfortunate” and “struck me as being not quite where they should be in terms of honesty,” said Deborah A. Silverman, who heads the Board of Ethics and Professional Standards at the Public Relations Society of America.
In an e-mail message, Ms. Silverman added, “Ketchum has an excellent reputation for high ethical standards,” but “the social media realm (including bloggers) is new territory for public relations practitioners, and I view this as a valuable learning opportunity.”
If some bloggers felt duped, they have nothing on the former owners of 142 West 11th Street, where Sotto Terra was staged.
Cabaret singer Cynthia Crane and playwright Ted Story, who owned the townhouse for four decades, were forced to sell it after losing their life savings to Bernard L. Madoff.
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This is almost exactly what Wanchai Ferry did this past March: Invited a whole slew of bloggers for a free dinner downtown, throwing in a $50 MC to pay for parking, etc. The surprise here was that the dinner was frozen, bagged Wanchai Ferry.
So the next time you’re invited to a free anything, double check that you know what you’re really getting – we can stuff our freezers with Marie Callender for almost free and then never have to get dressed.
AUGUST 18–A Florida babysitter was arrested yesterday for felony child neglect after she loaded a stroller containing an eight-month-old boy into the back of a Dodge Ram pickup truck which then drove around on two of the area’s busiest roadways, police charge.