Abbott: Reassuring Mothers Through the Similac Recall

On 4 March 2022 an Abbott factory in Michigan was linked to several infant infections traced to a batch of Similac. The recall made headline news worldwide within hours. In Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar the story arrived digitally, stripped of context, into Facebook groups where mothers share advice and fears about what they feed their babies.

Accurate information about the recall struggled to keep pace with rumour. Abbott needed to protect sentiment, ease parents' minds and stop misinformation spreading, in three countries, at the speed of a social media rumour.

Ruder Finn Era used its proprietary Digital Crisis Navigator to build a robust platform for proactive and reactive management of a fast-moving product crisis, with three objectives: ease parents' minds, protect sentiment and activate advocates.

The key decision was who should speak. Rather than a macro-influencer, whose endorsement would read as paid, the team engaged 44 real mothers across the region and tasked them with posting and commenting accurate information in the top mommy communities on Facebook, where the concern actually lived. Social listening ran throughout the crisis phase to monitor sentiment and measure the seeding's effect, and the programme ran for two months over March and April.