194: Ingredients in a Social Media Crisis: Daily Harvest’s Crumbling Credibility

Brands never want this type of publicity when they send their product to a social media influencer.

I'm literally shaking right now. Please just stay and listen to this because it's really, really important. About a month ago, I received a PR package from Daily Harvest. So I ate the French Lundoli crumbles and you're gonna understand in a minute why there's this fucking weird packaging thrown away in my trash. The following day I started having extreme stomach and gastro pain and went to the hospital, the ER in the middle of the night.

Oh, Welcome to the Indestructible PR podcast where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation. The headline reads, daily Harvest meal delivery service recalls lentil crumbles after customers report gastrointestinal emergencies. But even worse, many of those people went to Reddit to discuss it on this episode. The ingredients of a social media crisis. What Daily Harvest did right, wrong and oh so wrong. And what we can learn from today's viral media crisis. From big brands to small business, anyone selling a product or service is at risk of a reputational hit when their customers start to share their concerns online. From online reviews to being blasted in the social media replies, Running a business and having a social media account to promote that business, it is not for the weak of stomach. No one wants to be called out online for anything. Heck, no one wants to be called out for anything. But when it happens online, it is out for the world to see. So let's discuss this week something that happened to a popular meal delivery service when they had to recall a lentil based food product after days of their customers posting online about all of the issues that they were facing. Daily Harvest, it's a trendy brand. You've probably seen them on social media. Well, if you're a female of a certain age, you've definitely seen them. I know it comes across my social media feed often and every time time I see it I go for like a second like, should I? I'm like, nah, just make it at home. But there are plenty of other people probably targeted to younger people who fit the Daily Harvest consumer. The other Daily Harvest consumer is someone who happens to be on social media. So when Daily Harvest had a problem where their customers were getting sick, it was that type of customer. Let's call them the social media type of customer. Let's maybe call them the Millennials. When many of those millennials who use Daily Harvest and influencers who use Daily Harvest Took to social media and online forums to complain. Those complaints had a name, and that name is a victim, like the victim in the open. Her name was Abigail Silverman. She's an influencer on TikTok who shared her story. Let me entire TikTok for you to get a sense of what happened with Daily Harvest last week. Take a listen.

I'm literally shaking right now. Please just stay and listen to this because it's really, really important. About a month ago, I received a PR package from Daily Harvest. So I ate the French London Lee crumbles. And you're gonna understand in a minute why there's this fucking weird packaging thrown away in my trash. The following day I started having extreme stomach and gastro pain and went to the hospital, the er in the middle of the night. When I was in the er, they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I had elevated liver levels and then there was some bacteria in and they thought I had a. UTI gave me antibiotics for five days. I went home, the five days of antibiotics go by and then immediately I started getting this pain again, but it was even worse and I had 101.8 fever. I went to the ER a second time. They literally tested me for everything. Hepatitis, mono, gallstone, had to stay overnight in the er. And I literally had a CAT scan, a ultrasound, a vaginal ultrasound. So much blood work done, they literally couldn't figure it out. But I still had extremely elevated liver level for the last month. I still haven't drank. I'm seeing a liver specialist this week because we need to make sure that everything's okay. Okay. Before I went to the hospital the first time, I had taken a photo of the food packaging because that was the only thing that I had done different in my routine. Fast forward. I just got this email from their pr, but there is now an investigation going on into this product and this was the one I ate and just wait. I just started googling the product to see if anybody else was talking about this. People have the same exact symptoms as what I was having. Elevated liver levels with no explanation. This person below blood work, a CT scan and ultrasound and still elevated liver levels. It's so fucked up. So crazy. Story after story on this thread is the same. It's all the same types of symptom. And I was thinking just now maybe when I got this, I got it a little bit early because I got a PR package. So maybe it was like before people really started to have all these symptoms because mine was a month ago. This is Honestly, so insane like this post says that they're deleting things on social media to keep this quiet. This is crazy. And honestly, if the below is true, that is so fudge up. I have had to adjust my entire life the last month to deal with this. Part of me is grateful that I I have an explanation of what's going on because I've never had a health issue like this before until literally I ate this. That's the only thing that was different about my routine until I started having this issue. So serious psa. If you have this product, throw it away, do not eat it and contact Daily Harvest. This is not okay and I am not the type of person to put any brand on blast, but this is really, really serious. People are having serious health issues.

Can you imagine being the person running Daily Harvest or someone who's invested in Daily Harvest? And this is the publicity that you're getting from the people who you send product to to publicize your product. This is a nightmare for any brand. Now let's discuss what they did right. Well, they did the standard Playbook response. This is a definition of a PR crisis. Why? Because it is something that happened internally. There was a recall to their food which caused problems to their customers. That is not an external incident. That's an internal incident. Something happened within the system. So whether it's a supply chain or something in the process of Daily Harvest, Daily Harvest needs to own it. They did the Playbook response. They put up a statement on their website. They had a call to action for what customers can do. Customers are supposed to throw away the lentils out of a, quote, an abundance of caution. They offered a measly $10 credit for every bag of the product that was purchased. $10. Okay, I'm moving ahead to the what they did wrong. That doesn't even cover the cost of a copay. If someone has insurance and they went to the hospital, never mind the person who doesn't even have insurance. Hello Millennials. So that was one thing that they did. They did their playbook response of what to do in a recall. Here's a small portion of an email response that was included in a story. A small number of customers have reported gastrointestinal discomfort after consuming our French lentil plus leek crumbles. The email said, as included in our cooking instructions, lentils must be thoroughly cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees. Take note of what happened right there. I talked about this in the last two episodes when we talked about Uvalde, the press conference and even the Matthew McConaughey press conference. That's a little bit of manipulative framing right there. First they wordsmith the number of customers. They said a small number of customers. Well, what is small when people are sick? So what is that number? Their number could be from the number of people who complained, maybe the number of people on social media, but they have no idea of knowing truly how many people were sick from this. So they just said the small number of customers who reported it. That's just the people who reported it. But also they added right away instructions for how to cook the lentils, thereby throwing shade and pointing the finger and the blame to the customer. That's not a good move. Let's take this a little bit further. So let's get into their next not so good moves. The problems with their response I found out about this issue online. Someone who follows me on TikTok. Someone who a mutual we both follow each other on TikTok. She alerted me on Twitter to the Daily Harvest issue. I hadn't even seen it before, so right there, this is how it works. Someone shared it to me, which by the way, now that I'm on TikTok, people share crises with me all the time. And they don't just chat about it, they send video. They have the receipts. Anyway, so she had sent me a post on Twitter where someone said, I'm following the Daily Harvest crisis on social media right now and it's wild and it is. So NBC picked up the story about the crisis in the article. They did mention in graph 2 that daily harvest posted a recall statement on the website on Sunday, which was the day of this article. However, the crux of the article was not about the recall. It was really about Daily Harvest response to the recall, which wasn't that good because what was the sourcing that NBC News used firsthand? Sourcing from where else? Social media. So they grabbed commentary from people who were directly complaining about what happened. They reach out to the person, the person responds an email back to them giving them the details of the severe gastrointestinal illness that they had as a result of consuming Daily Harvest. If you Google Daily Harvest, crumbles, lentils, leeks, just take a look and you are going to see all the commentary. It will likely lead you to a place that NBC also mentions, which is a Reddit page where they have over 600,000 followers. And if you go to Reddit, you are going to see forums dedicated to consumer brands. You are also going to see commentary on people's experience with with those brands for inst. Here are two Reddits on Daily Harvest hey everyone, I am beyond livid. My wife ordered the Daily Harvest Lentil crumbles on May 11th and ate them during the week of the 16th. I didn't have any since. Ironically it was her health thing. On Saturday, May 21st. Nearly a month ago, she developed symptoms consistent with severe liver problems, extreme fatigue, dark urine, low grade fever, and whole body itching with no rash. Oh my gosh, that's frightening. Next my mother got food poisoning from the lentil crumbles. I am roughly aware about Daily Harvest and my mom has been subscribed for over a year. My mom had the crumble for lunch on Tuesday and the next morning at 4:00am she woke up. It was very terrible and debilitating. Then they go on to talk about trying to reach Daily Harvest and the reply was and then others shared their experiences on an Instagram post comment thread and they deleted the Daily Harvest is trying to cover this up. So when you follow those breadcrumbs, these are the types of issues that make a crisis even worse. For any brand dealing with a social media crisis, this is exactly what you don't want to have happen. You don't want the viral spread from people like this who are speaking the truth and are speaking to their situation because their situation, as I mentioned, has a name and that name is victim. If your crisis has a victim, then it's going to be a whole different take on a crisis. Many of the issues that I deal with in my clientele, they deal with customers who have complaints. It might be service complaint or high prices, you know, charges. It could be an outside group is involved, you know, stakeholder activism. But there's a different type of activism when it is attached to victim and this is the victim cycle. So right now I want to play the TikTok that I posted last week about my quick hit on this crisis. Thanks to a mutual I found out that Daily Harvest, the meal delivery service, is having a big bit of a crisis. If you were unaware that Daily Harvest was dealing with a crisis, particularly if you were a customer of Daily Harvest, you would be forgiven. Because if you followed them on Instagram in order to find out an important message about the recall, you would have to find it under a walnut plus time promotion shop. Now could I order like one reason why I feel like my liver is about to explode, please? Now as someone who has spent years working in crisis management, I like to analyze when a crisis like this happens and look at the response, see what they did well and see what was poorly managed. What didn't work so well in this crisis for Daily Harvest is when a news article comes out like this with NBC News explaining what had happened with the lentil recall. They highlighted a few things that are not good. NBC News did include the statement from Daily Harvest indicating that a small number of customers have reported gastrointestinal discomfort after consuming our French lentil plus leek crumbles. Now, that particular type of wordsmithing would work in other situations, but not this one. Because NBC News went to a place where a lot of other news organizations, reporters and their producers go for firsthand primary sourcing social media. In this case, they grabbed it. One person's direct account of what happened when they consumed Daily Harvest lentils. And to add insult to injury, the last sentence, if this is the last sentence that you see in any crisis a brand is managing, the company didn't respond to requests for comment. You never want the no comment floating around there. And the crux of the NBC News story was this, that Daily Harvest only responded after scores of people talked about it online. When the crisis ends up on Reddit, you have a whole new sub crisis that you're dealing with. It's the victim cycle. People can see victimization play out in real time. People who have been dismissed or wronged or in the case of Daily Harvest, harmed, they're going to go to online forums like Reddit and you know who's going to find all that information? Other customers and the press. Now, a clue as to why they are working with someone in crisis management. When you go to Twitter, there is a link directly that goes here to this advisory, non advisory, but only if you're on Twitter. So here's the lesson. If your brand dealing with a crisis and your crisis involves victims, you want to respond to where your victims are. Don't make your victims come to you. All right, so what you heard there, in my analysis, you know, again, I always go towards what is causing the crisis to fester. Why won't the wound heal? And when that happens, it's usually because there is a person involved and that person has feelings and those feelings were hurt. That is the first step in this victim cycle. So think about a crisis that's happened with your brand or other brands and think about the ones that kind of got away from you. Why did they get so big? And this is the case in Daily Harvest. So the first part of the cycle is the victim's feelings. They may feel anger and they may feel concerned. As you heard in the Reddit post about someone who's concerned about their wife and then concerned about their mother. They want help, but they're frustrated because there isn't any help. The first step always leads to the second step. Not necessarily everyone does this, but enough people will do it. And the right kind of person who does it can lead to a lot of problems, and that's seeking retribution. Seeking retribution is not someone who's doing something out of spite. They're not just hitting back for revenge. They feel that the response was inadequate. The help that they needed for their feelings was either late, it was insincere, it just wasn't enough. So what happens is that anger festers and they're trying to find out who was guilty, who can make this better. And if they don't hear anything and they don't see anything, they're going to go out. They're going to seek out their own solution to the matter. And what that is is they need some type of solution that allows them to heal and make them feel better. So helplessness gives to understanding that they have power to help other people who they feel has been victimized as well. There is nothing more than a victim likes to do than to protect other victims and to stop future victimization. And when this happens, and if this happens in a company that you work for, an organization, you have a bigger problem on your hands. So that's why your response has to speak to this need for healing. There needs to be something that brings closure for that victim. You need to show compassion. You need to show empathy. You need to show some type of validation of their feelings. Not just a simple response on a website. Now something else. Few other things that Daily Harvest did wrong. Now again, think of the mindset of a victim. They did have a statement and a brief. It's not even an advisory, as you heard on TikTok. I called it an advisory, non advisory, where there was information that was a link on Twitter. The only place you could really find that link is if you went to the website on your own or if you went to Twitter, not if you went to Instagram. And these are kind of like the big social media platforms. On Twitter, that's the voice of authority. That's where you're going to have your press. That's where you're going to have other stakeholders in the business and industry. You're going to have a certain level. That's not really where the Daily Harvest influencers come to play. So on Twitter, they have a link to the advisory, but over on Instagram, Daily Harvest has a post, so it's updated on 6 19. An important message regarding our French lentil plus leek crumbles. Now they originally on the 12th, they're posting information buried under aesthetics. So if you were swiping through Instagram quickly, which is what many people do, all you would see is a photo, a beautifully photographed photo of Daily Harvest crumbles opened on a plate of pasta, probably vegan, probably gluten free. So maybe it's rice pasta. It looks appetizing, but it really is about an alert about food that's making you sick. You have to go to their link via the Instagram link. So you got to go back into Daily Harvest and then you have to scroll and go to a particular link to find that advisory. That is wrong, that is deceptive, that is not helping your victims find healing. It's going to annoy them even more. And sure enough, that's what a lot of people on social media picked up on, is that it was embedded their product. This crisis is a food poisoning product crisis. It is not just, oh, a few of our customers got sick. Boo hoo. This is labeled under food poisoning and consumers need to throw it away and get a $10 off coupon. And then also the last thing that I think Daily Harvest missed is, and this is from the NBC News story, there was no comment. Okay, so we got one statement via email, but there really wasn't any comment. And from whom do we need to hear a comment from? And that will lead us into our indestructible pr. Tip. In every episode, I include one leave behind tip. If there's anything for you to remember, it's this tip. What is the driving principle of this crisis, of this story? When there are victims, and when there are victims that are seeking closure, they also are seeking someone to blame. If that someone is no one, if it's just the blame, it's going to ratchet up the victimization of it. Okay? It's not going to go away. The crisis isn't going to go away. It's going to linger. What we need in a crisis like this, when there is food poisoning, when there is a recall, when people are in the hospital, when people are very, very sick, and oh my gosh, if there's a death, say it with me, people who do we need to hear from the leaders, the owners, the CEO, the head of the company, we need to see the empathy. We need to read the empathy. We need to attach that empathy to a person and they need to show it. If you don't, the crisis will just linger and leave a bad taste in the customer's mouth. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Listening. We'll see you here again next week. Bye for now.