Month: September 2011

In August of 2007 Mattel Inc., the world’s largest toy company, began a massive recall of 9 million toys because of faulty magnets and high levels of lead in paints used on the toys. Immediately Mattel was quick to take the blame for its mistakes in what seemed to be the ethically correct move. CEO  Bob Eckert  was adamant that the company’s number one concern was children safety and for the most part parents bought his apology.

Is ethical business cutting as many corners as is possible in order to turn a profit and making a seemingly sincere apology when those corners come back to bike the business’ public image or should Mattel have spared no efforts from preventing this from happening in the first place.

The public would not likely have been so forgiving with Mattel if they knew that over the 66 years of the company’s existence it has had 28 recalls, numerous reported accusations of stolen toy ideas and in the mid 1970′s found to be releasing fraudulent financial statements to give the appearance of growth.

Can Mattel be considered morally conscious for quickly assuming the blame in such ethical fashion, or was it meerly damage control to hide its underhanded business methods.

One of the topics discussed in the article “Positioning” by Al Ries and Jack Trout was the importance of getting your product into the consumer’s mind. Recently there has been a certain breakfast cereal which has been growing in popularity for doing exactly that. In 2009 a couple from BC began selling their healthy breakfast cereal online. It was then called HapiFoods. With hundreds of cereal brands already fighting for a share in the market, the name HapiFoods wasn’t quite grabbing the attention of the consumers and it showed. The couple sold about ten bags per day under this name. After getting raving reviews from their few customers the couple decided to change the name to Holy Crap. Under the new name the cereal sold 100 bags on the first day alone.

Holy Crap is an extremely healthy cereal packed full of amino acids, omega 3, natural fibre and iron. Often a product with such health benefits can boast them as a relevant distinction from competitors however there are many other cereal brands claiming to benefit health. In this example Holy Crap used its unconventional name to get its brand into the consumer’s mind.

http://holycrap.ca/