Another reputation bungle - Royal Canin

According to the early press reports preliminary tests showed that a batch of raw material received by Royal Canin South Africa from a third party supplier may have been contaminated. At this point around 20 dogs had died and many others were ill and being treated at vets.

The company were, at the beginning of last week, unable to specify what the contaminant was and said further tests were being done. Company spokespeople reassured the public that as soon as they had more information, it would be released to the media.

Hands somewhat tied

All well and good but there were a lot of worried and a lot of out-of-pocket pet owners who wanted more answers. As did vets, who needed to know how to treat these animals. Ok, you may say I’m being a bit harsh, after all the company did issue a press statement. But all their dealings with the media were through their PR company whose hands it seemed were somewhat tied.

When 702 Talk Radio’s early morning host John Robbie rightly requested an interview with Gregory Watine, the MD of Royal Canin South Africa, he was initially told they would rather not enter into any interviews that may be confrontational, but would in fact be happy perhaps to appear on Jenny Crwys-Williams’ show.

Now what John Robbie was in fact doing was offering them a chance to put across the facts and of course answer questions – even though he knew that the tests to find out the cause of the problem were ongoing. And yes, Robbie is often rather direct – but guess what – that’s what people tune into a station like 702 Talk Radio for. To hear the truth without window dressing and carefully worded statements from press offices that tell you nothing.

Eventually an interview was granted to David O’Sullivan which Robbie replayed the next day – but not before adding, using the name of the PR person, that when he had again requested an interview he was told that “Wasn’t one interview enough for 702?”. Hope that PR isn’t planning on getting too much publicity out of 702 in the future!

And like the situation with Renault I wrote about on this site a few weeks ago, Robbie ran with the fact that THEY WOULDN’T TALK TO HIM for hours – and not just for one day, but until the end of the week, when Watine finally agreed to an interview to talk about the final results of the tests.

Lines jammed

Needless to say once again, as with Renault, callers jammed the lines all week and sent SMSs telling their stories of their battles and heartaches over this story.

So what were people thinking out there – did Royal Canin have something to hide? In all fairness to them it is obvious they were doing everything possible to resolve the situation but a few days is all it takes to do immense damage to a brand…

At the end of last week the test results were presented which showed that the food was contaminated by melamine and the SA Veterinary Association urged all dog owners to return all possibly contaminated food to their vets.