The Campaign

On 3 August, 2013, New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra issued a warning that Clostridium Botulium contaminated whey protein concentrate may have entered its supply chain. Contamination can cause dizziness, breathing problems, and fatigue, among other symptoms. This hit China hard, as New Zealand was a trusted source of imported dairy products Chinese mothers already did not trust local brands, especially after having witnessed some profound milk quality scandals. Consumers felt at a loss, and immediately stopped buying Fonterra products. Questions and doubts were raised, and anger was conveyed through social media. Trust in Fonterra was rapidly waning. Stock prices fell, and New Zealand was facing a worldwide backlash, especially from China’s vocal social media. In order to rebuild credibility, we needed a new Social Media PR strategy. We devised the campaign, “Ask Fonterra, Ask Me.” Within 7 days of the press announcement, the campaign was created to divert all questions to us rather than to let people speculate in forums or social media-.This simple idea of tagging all concerns online, was answered within our own environment which invited netizens to visit us for clarity. We deployed Weibo as the main communication channel, setting the search engine Baidu Brandzone to focus on keywords related to the issues. This gave us control of the social environment. By shifting concerns about milk to our website rather than speculative environments this changed the whole social landscape.

The Brief

Our goal was to own China’s social media and stop it from spiraling out of control. Mainly target netizens and people who care about this incident.

Results

Measuring the campaign against the original brief objectives, “Ask Fonterra, Ask Me” managed to: 25 % of China’s internet users, which equals roughly 140 million people, visited the Fonterra site. We answered hundreds of questions on the quality of the milk and the contamination. Positive comments increased by 1,500%, thereby turning around negativity. Most importantly, the campaign rebuilt trust among Chinese consumers in Fonterra’s dairy products. And when we launched Anchor UHT Milk into China in November, we gained a solid 5.5% market share up from nothing, within 6 months.

Execution

To tackle the Fonterra crisis, We developed a mini-site (www.askfonterra.com/zh) to be the central repository for all questions with expert answers provided. We also captured videos of staff, communicating their faith in Fonterra Company and their support of its integrity. All the questions were first sourced from social media and our answers were placed as a url link to our site. We also used Weibo as our communication channel for driving our interest in listening to our consumer and providing them with real answers that they can truly rely on. We activated our Baidu Brandzone to have “Ask Fonterra, Ask Me” as the main focus on certain keywords related to the issues.

The Situation

Fonterra’s crisis had added a number of complexities. Our consumers were afraid and the national news didn’t help as it placed a rather negative image in New Zealand and Fonterra as a company. We realised we needed to rebuild confidence not by shying away from the public, but to confront the public. After all, we’re the whistle blowers for a number of milk issues and we’re known for our integrity around the world – we needed to bring that attitude and effort to life in China.

The Strategy

The biggest challenge for Fonterra was there was a lot of buzz online in regards to the contamination issue -- questions were left unanswered, as there was no clarity to what happened. We decided to take control of the situation by redirecting all their concerns into the right channel by launching “Ask Fonterra, Ask Me”. The campaign was to capture all the concerns, questions and issues raised in social media, tag them and then lead them to our site for answers by Fonterra China staff, who are supported by experts. We wanted to take the central role in consumers concerns and we answered all the concerns directed from various social media and search engines. Millions of consumer visited the campaign site , while we continued to provide clear, transparent answers to all the doubts and questions raised. And soon, we successfully turn the negative circumstance to a positive one.