The last few days at Chipotle HQ could not have been much fun for the people running the marketing and public relations operation. The response to their announcement that they are removing some GMO ingredients from some of their menu items was not exactly met with the round of applause they must have been expecting. It’s been more of a collective raspberry.
For the PR team it must feel more like a scandal being leaked, rather than an exciting new initiative. It was bad enough that the Ad Week blog did a post on it (pictured above) under the category “PR Fail”. When you’ve lost the support of Mother Jones on your sustainable food strategy, you are in big trouble. Ouch.
The thing that had many of us scratching our heads over yesterday was: What was animating this backlash in places where espousing the goals of the food movement is usually met with approval and encouragement? Just two years ago the decision by Whole Foods to implement full GMO labeling was widely met with approving coverage. It feels like a switch has flipped. What has changed since then?
Let me suggest five phenomena contributing to this turn of events.
1.) The Rise of the Celebrity Quack Has Shown That Quackery Has Consequences
The success of Jenny McCarthy, Foodbabe, Dr. Oz and other celebrity quacks brought quackery out of the shadows and dark corners of the internet and forced mainstream journalists to confront the phenomenon head on.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: 5 Big Drivers Behind the Chipotle Backlash
