Now Who’d Want to Bust Poor Little Tony?
Thomas J. Madden, Chairman and CEO, Transmedia Group
Much earlier in my topsy-turvy PR career I was assigned to rescue three wonderful, but much maligned clients at the time: poor little Tony the Tiger and his buddies, Snap, Crackle and Pop. The mean ole government tried unsuccessfully to bust them, break them up, throw them in the slammer and toss the key into a seething sea of sour milk.My job at Dudley Anderson Yutzy, one of the country’s largest PR firms at the time, was to defend them. Save them.I was handling one of the firm’s largest clients, Kellogg Company of Battle Creek, Michigan, which was in a pitched battle with the FTC to keep Kellogg’s cereals alive and crackling.Kellogg and the Generals (Mills and Foods) were charged with constituting an illegal oligopoly. The FTC called the threesome a bloated oligopoly, stifling competition and ripping off consumers with artificially high prices.Thrust into the media glare, Kellogg’s executives needed help in making their case to the national media, so I was dispatched to Battle Creek to media train their top executives.Judging by today’s standards when companies are not businesses but behemoths like Amazon, Facebook and Google--giant octopusses stretching their tentacles into countless other industries--breaking up poor little Snap, Crackle and Pop seems in retrospect to be just plain mean, silly, almost unpatriotic. And that’s the way I characterized it in the publicity I generated and speeches I wrote.D-A-Y was a pioneering company in public relations. It helped to increase annual consumption of bananas in the U.S. by highlighting the fruit’s health benefits. It popularized orange juice in campaigns for the Florida Citrus Commission. Eventually it merged with one of the world’s largest marketing communications firms, Ogilvy & Mather.The Everything Store?It seems so funny now to have been slogging away to preserve the cereal industry while today guys like Jeff Bezos seem to be running The Everything Store.He’s in parcel delivery, supermarkets and packaged foods. Then in apparel, trucking, auto parts and pharmaceuticals. Now he’s moving into real estate brokerages, makeup, concert ticketing, swimming pool supplies, and omg banking. These are just a sampling of the fields battered at various points in the past year because of Amazon’s encroachment or just rumors of its interest in entering them.
Some companies become verbs because of their products: to Google or to Xerox. Amazon has become a verb because of damage it can inflict on other companies. To be Amazoned means to have your business shaking like a leaf because the wolf is eyeballing your industry.Google is a powerhouse. It’s the dominant player in search engines, online videos, online advertising. Is it a monopoly? If it looks like a duck, operates like a duck, maybe it’s a duck?Luther Lowe, vice president of public policy at Yelp, says Google has engaged in severely anti-competitive behavior against its competition.According to Lowe, 20 years ago there was Microsoft, which was dominant with Windows, snuffing out start-ups like Netscape. Today Google is dominant in general search, but so far has avoided imperiling vertical search services like Yelp, TripAdvisor, ZocDoc. Back to Snap, Crackle and PopWhile creating sympathy for cereals, I also pointed out the three dominant companies making them were hardly limiting consumer’s choice. Far from it.There were producing a plethora of cereals in bright colors hawked by cutesy characters. There were filling entire aisles and sweetening supermarkets. Ok, I’ll confess I did not stress how much sugar they were packing. Sorry, but I’m a PR guy, not an angel.During my Snap, Crackle and Pop PR campaign one of those lucky breaks occurred. The New York Times decided to reprint a speech I had written for Kellogg’s then president Bill LaMothe. He was so appreciative he flew to New York the next day in his private jet to personally thank me. I was summoned to join him at the Plaza Hotel, where naturally we met over–alas—breakfast. After some friendly small talk over our cereal bowls, his conversation turned surprisingly solemn.He declared it was the goal of his presidency to get more raisins into Kellogg’s Raisin Bran. I searched his face for a sign of humor, but this Battle Creeker wasn’t kidding. This man was on a mission. You could say it was his raisin d’etre. Years later his determination paid off. He rose to Chairman, while I rose to Vice President, Assistant to the President, of NBC.Finally Bill reached his summit: Two scoopfuls in every box of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran. And I started my own PR firm, TransMedia Group. [author] About the Author: Thomas Madden is CEO of TransMedia Group, one of the largest independent PR firms in Florida, where it currently operates. The firm’s clients have included AT&T, American Red Cross, City of New York, GL Homes, Jordache Enterprises, McCormick and Schmick’s, Rexall Sundown, Stanley Steemer. Now please buy my latest book which is full of political Snap, Crackle and Pop and titled: “Is there enough Brady in Trump to win the inSUPERable Bowl?” available on – you guessed it – AMAZON! [/author]
