Are big bold ads now the immediate way to address real or perceived injustices thought to have been perpetrated through the columns of newspaper? On July 2, the New Zealand Herald ran a story stating that an investigation found a couple of eco-friendly laundry powders had high pH levels which could pose a health risk. One of these was an Ecostore product. The very next day Ecostore ran a full page ad in the NZ Herald claiming, There’s no Dirt on our Laundry Powder.

Advertising your side of the story in response to editorial coverage is not new, but until now it has normally been used when a publication has refused to run a ‘correction’ or adequately covered your side of the story.

Basically Ecostore ‘s response was: yes we did have some laundry powder that was found in May to register a high pH level, but that "honest mistake” was remedied in four days. It insisted the out-of-spec powder was never unsafe, and for that reason no recall from the market was warranted, although Consumer NZ thought it should have been.

The Newspaper Advertising Bureau thought Ecostore’s response to the Herald article was pretty cool, and awarded it "ad of the month”. The judges commented: "The ad’s got topicality. That’s how a newspaper should be used to make a statement.”

Putting aside the issue of how Ecostore’s agency managed to secure that much advertising space in the NZ Herald the next day (when those of us who’ve tried unsuccessfully to get recall ads placed within a couple of days), was this full page a sound strategy?

Yes and no. Ecostore did address the issues raised in the same paper the previous day, but not in the same medium. And people who read news items do not always read ads, even the full page ones.

From its point of view, Ecostore may have put the record straight. We don’t know what effort Ecostore made to redress the issues raised through the editorial columns and/or whether the NZ Herald lost interest in the issue.

We do know Ecostore did not meet its own expectations – it made a mistake with the product specs – but they did not recall the product because it did not represent the danger alleged by Consumer NZ. When building and protecting a brand, surely product integrity is as important as disputed issues of safety.
I’m not convinced that the ad adequately resolved the issue at hand, i.e. mistakenly high pH levels.

There’s news and there’s views. The ad was a view. I’m sure Ecostore recognises that news can and does shape opinion more sustainably than views. On this basis I would counsel an editorial response, rather than an advertising one.

And there is also the issue of whether a precedent has been set where newspapers might deny a person the right of reply on the basis that they can ‘take out an ad if they want to correct the content or tone of coverage’!