Did Taylor Farms Handle the Crisis Correctly? Here's What Happened

Taylor Farms got the apology it wanted. The FDA told the company that one iceberg lettuce product from Central Mexico had a “confirmed positive” cyclospora test, then said the next day it had made a mistake and the result was a false positive. As of the FDA's own account, no positive product test for cyclospora has been identified. Taylor Farms then built an entire statement around that apology, led with it, and left the people who got sick in the last paragraph under "our thoughts remain."

That is where this crisis got away from them. A false positive on one test does not mean the outbreak isn't yours — and as I say on the live, it is still unclear exactly where this outbreak is coming from. The FDA's traceback pointed at Central Mexico. And while Taylor Farms spent its statement arguing with a federal agency, the story became a Taco Bell story. Muck Rack ran the numbers for the live and you can watch it happen: Taco Bell's article volume runs past everyone else's, Taco Bell turns up inside the Taylor Farms word cloud, then inside the Walmart word cloud. Taco Bell started promoting menu items without lettuce. Taylor Farms took its statement down entirely.

In this breakdown I read the statement line by line, ask who was in the room while it was written, and show you what the media data did before and after the correction. You always have to speak to the pain. You don't have to describe the symptoms, but you do have to see the person who ate that salad at a party, on vacation, at a rehearsal dinner.

Second half: Amy Griffin, her memoir The Tell, and a lawsuit from a former classmate who says the book's most harrowing anecdotes came from her life. Griffin's answer was to file her own suit and pull the New York Times into it. Same week, same playbook as Taylor Farms. Attack the institution, skip the harm. The biggest tell that your story doesn't hold up is when you attack the press.

Chapters:
0:00 The Friday hit list and this week's PR fires
1:12 Where the Taylor Farms PR goes off course
1:58 The full Taylor Farms statement, read line by line
3:15 The headline is a request to be vindicated
4:12 Company versus agency is never the play
5:12 "Our thoughts remain" and who was in the room
6:43 The fatal flaw, it forgets the pain
8:00 The statement gets pulled, and the audience word cloud
9:37 Taco Bell takes the hit, the Muck Rack numbers
10:57 Word clouds for FDA, Taco Bell, Taylor Farms and Walmart
12:26 What a false positive actually means, and the sentiment swing
14:42 A question about FDA quality control
15:30 Amy Griffin, The Tell, and why I stopped reading
16:46 Who actually sells books now
18:43 Bell Burden, Martha's Vineyard, and hidden wealth
20:07 The classmate's lawsuit
21:22 What bad PR looks like in the New York Times
23:23 Maureen Callahan and the media industrial complex
24:23 Attacking the press is the tell
25:00 The legal-threat play
26:29 Same playbook, both stories
27:46 Mitch McConnell watch
28:37 September category trainings

🎙 The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson