BulletProofBlog the blog on crisis communications

In 1998, 16-month-old Danny Keysar was killed after his crib at a Chicago-area day care facility collapsed. When his parents learned that the crib had been recalled five years earlier, they were understandably outraged. The day care provider had no idea the crib had been recalled. Neither did the parent who had donated it.

An underlying cause of the problem that led to Danny Keysar’s death is called “recall fatigue.” With tens of millions of products being pulled from shelves due to potentially dangerous defects every year, consumers find it nearly impossible to keep up with the avalanche of information publicly available – and in some cases, they simply don’t care. According to a Washington Post article detailing the phenomenon, a recent study shows that 12 percent of Americans who knew they had a recalled food product at home ate it anyway. According to Marc Schoem, the top recall expert at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), only about 30 percent of recalled products are ever returned.

“We do a good job of getting dangerous products off store shelves, but we do believe the greatest challenge is getting dangerous products out of the homes,” said CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum in an interview for the Washington Post article cited above. Now, a new law bearing Danny Keysar’s name is aiming to change that. The legislation – which went into effect last month – requires manufacturers of certain baby products to include registration cards that will better enable companies to contact consumers when a recall takes place.

While it remains to be seen if similar legislation will be introduced for other products in the near future, what is evident is that effective recall communications is fast becoming a key part of protecting any brand built on safety and reliability. Responsible companies now must not only recall products properly when deficiencies occur, they must communicate about those recalls effectively with consumers.

Costco, for example, utilizes membership registration information to reach consumers in the event that a recall takes place. In another interview for the Post piece cited above, Costco Vice President for Quality Assurance and Food Safety Craig Wilson said that “When we get a recall notice, I can tell you everybody who bought that product, exactly when and where they bought that, and I have their phone and address. I’ll make a phone call the day the recall is announced, in a human voice, and the message goes right to them and tells them what’s going on, in clear, easy-to-understand language.”

Costco’s recall communications template is an example that all consumer product manufacturers and retailers should be striving to emulate – because a recall really isn’t a recall any more if consumers don’t know it has taken place.

Gene Grabowski is the Senior Vice President of Crisis and Litigation at Levick Strategic Communications, the nation’s top crisis communications firm. He is also a contributing author to Bulletproof Blog. Connect with him @crisisguru.