It’s 2018, civilization is as sharp and bright as ever, right?
Except people are literally being hospitalized because they are willingly ingesting Tide laundry pods.
So maybe we haven’t reached our peak of intelligence just yet.
The newest social media fad – “The Tide Pod Challenge” involves people, particularly young individuals, recording themselves ingesting a Tide Pod and sharing the outcome on social media.
What started as a joke that stemmed from a satirical article on The Onion has quickly become an internet sensation.
The idea is that it’s so funny to watch people gag and fuss after they’ve bravely put the cleaning product into their mouths. People know that the laundry pods aren’t meant to be eaten, which makes the footage of people ingesting them that much more intriguing.
But, not surprisingly, this trend is having many negative outcomes. Young children have died in the past from accidentally eating these products, giving merit to the worry of this fad turning fatal.
So, what is Tide’s role in this?
They are guilty by association. Though Tide never encouraged this behavior, nor did they have anything to do with the creation of this challenge, it’s still their product and it’s being used irresponsibly by young people and the effects are disastrous.
It’s a PR nightmare.
Children and teens are being treated by poison control, taken to hospitals, and becoming very ill because of a product that was never meant to be eaten.
So how did they handle this?
Tide had their spokesperson, football player Rob Gronkowski, star in a video where he explains that Tide Pods are meant for washing clothes, not eating. It’s the simplest of concepts really, but it’s the way that Tide marketed this campaign that makes the difference.
It’s a video that could easily become trending because of the way it’s made to look like a meme. They launched this message primarily on social media and made it so that it could be turned into a GIF and spread around the internet like wildfire. They know that teenagers and young people are their target audience with this message so they are trying to beat them at their own game, which just might work.
Some have joked that we need to stop warning people about the danger of Tide Pods and let natural selection run its course, but if you work for Tide’s PR team this is not something to laugh about.
Sources
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tide-pod-challenge-ingesting-detergent-risks/
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2018/01/12/doctors-warn-against-eating-tide-pods-in-latest-social-media-challenge.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/01/13/teens-are-daring-each-other-to-eat-tide-pods-we-dont-need-to-tell-you-thats-a-bad-idea/?utm_term=.79de24bd6608
https://www.theonion.com/google-museum-app-finds-users-fine-art-doppelganger-1822121522