The Porkers Apologize

If you've been following the whole pork vs boobs saga I posted about yesterday, you might be interested to know that Jennifer Laycock has received a formal apology from Steve Murphy, the Pork Board's CEO.

To their credit, the Pork Board has also made sure that all persons who complained about their approach to The Lactivist, (and there were a LOT of complaints), received a polite, measured email response from Mr Murphy:

"Thank you for your email to the National Pork Board. We appreciate you taking the time to send us an email regarding our communication with "The Lactivist" webstore on CafePress.com about our trademark rights.

It is important to understand that our lawyer’s correspondence to Ms. Laycock was in no way intended to challenge or demean breastfeeding or those who support it. This correspondence is about defending our trademark and the National Pork Board's responsibility to protect pork industry investments on behalf of the 70,000 US pork producers we represent. The Other White Meat® is a pork industry trademark whose value was built slowly and thoughtfully over 20 years, paid for by producer’s hard-earned dollars. Any infringement on that mark would substantially lessen its value and impact for US pork producers.

It’s also important to understand that the National Pork Board cannot pick and choose which infringement challenges it decides to address. We have a responsibility to the industry to challenge all viable infringements (and we do so on a weekly basis) or face the possibility of losing trademark protection and allowing the industry’s valued trademark to become public domain, and thus worthless.

Again, the National Pork Board takes no issue with your important cause. Our interest here was in protecting US pork producer’s investment in The Other White Meat® trademark. We apologize if our response seemed impersonal or harsh; that was not our intent. We will use all feedback that we receive to improve our communication processes in the future. Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention.

Sincerely,


Steve Murphy
Chief Executive Officer
The National Pork Board"

Their choice of legal team may be questionable, but the Pork Board's public relations team seem to know exactly what they are doing. They are in full damage control mode and are doing a jolly good job of mopping up the PR mess before it spreads too far.

As a former PR consultant myself, I tip my hat at them. Having the apology come from the very top is smart. It demonstrates how seriously they are taking the complaints. The wording of the complainant response is polite and restrained. Addressing each and every complainer personally is impressive. I dread to think how many flames they received in their in-box. It would've been tempting to ignore them all and issue some stock standard release. You can bet that somebody has been working overtime since this thing bubbled over.

This whole situation underscores the growing importance of online reputation management. SEO players such as Andy Beal recognized the potential growth in ORM a long time ago. But I wonder how many PR agencies offer this service? You can be sure I'll be adding ORM to my own service offerings this year.

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