Brand Failures

148 Brand failures
49 Farley’s infant milk
The salmonella incident
When the UK Central Public Health Laboratory made the connection
between Farley’s infant milk and salmonella in 1985, the story made the headlines.
The product was recalled immediately at a cost of £8 million. Farley’s
parent company Glaxo Smith-Kline was forced to put Farley’s into liquidation
and sold its two plants to high-street chemist Boots for £18 million.
Boots had an almost impossible task in rebuilding the brand, given the
amount of negative media coverage it had suffered. After all, health scares are
always damaging for brands, but health scares involving babies are, if
anything, even more catastrophic.
Furthermore, while Farley’s had been off the shelves, its two main competitors
– Cow & Gate and Wyeth – had stepped up their production leaving
little room for Farley’s to squeeze back in. Although Boots ploughed millions
into promoting and marketing Farley, the brand’s market share was never able
to return to the levels it had reached before the salmonella incident. After
years of persistence, eventually Boots sold the business to Heinz in 1994.
Lessons from Farley’s
Keep a look out for internal threats. The salmonella incident had been
avoidable because it had been caused by an employee not following
adequate procedures.