Brand Failures

140 Brand failures
46 Gerber’s PR blunder
In 1986, Gerber, the German baby food manufacturer, made a critical PR
mistake. When incidents of glass shards were found in its jars of baby food,
Gerber remained tight-lipped and failed to issue a recall. This decision invited
a lot of criticism with articles in Business Week, Newsweek and Time openly
attacking the company on ethical grounds. Although the pieces of glass had
not caused any fatalities, some babies had been severely hurt.
Glass fragments had originally been found in some Gerber products –
namely, their apple-plum and apple-cherry juices – in 1984. But in that
instance, Gerber handled the problem effectively. Although neither the
company nor the authorities found a manufacturing-related cause, Gerber
recalled over half a million jars of juice.
In 1986, however, there were over 200 reports of glass being found in
Gerber’s baby products across the United States. Although the authorities
failed to discover anything that would warrant a recall, Maryland officials
banned certain Gerber ranges from being sold anywhere in the state. Gerber’s
response The company sued the state of Maryland. Other than this legal
reaction, Gerber did nothing. Not a word was said to the media about the
issue, in the hope that the whole fiasco would just pass by.
From Gerber’s perspective, the company was doing nothing wrong. After
all, nothing suggested that the fragments of glass were the fault of Gerber’s
manufacturing process. It had certainly been under no obligation to recall
its products. The company therefore believed that the state of Maryland was
in the wrong and took what it saw as the appropriate legal action.