Sultry Sally faces PR woes
Marketing wunderkind Tim Pethick is facing a major PR issue after an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph in Sydney suggested that the packaging on his Sultry Sally chips may be misleading consumers.
The newspaper contradicted the brand’s claim that its crisps are 97% fat free, after commissioning laboratories to examine the products. It said they contained twice as much fat as claimed.
The newspaper has shared its findings with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which said it would launch an investigation.
Regardless of any regulatory issues, erroneous claims over packaging can generate major PR issues for brands. Last year Ribena was fined NZ$217,500 after it admitted that it had misled customers over the vitamin C content of its blackcurrant drink.
The issue led to bad publicity across the world for the brand. Eventually the boss of GlaxoSmithKline in Australia appeared in TV ads apologising for the incident.
The incident is a new blow for Pethick, who build a high profile in Australia’s marketing community after the success of Nudie fruit juices. But his next venture, creative consultancy What If, closed its doors a few months after he joined as managing director. Pethick handles the marketing for Sultry Sally and has a stake in the business.
UPDATE: Check out the comment section for a very full response from Tim Pethick.
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Hi Tim
The flippant side of me is tempted to say “What a great result!” – we certainly couldn’t afford a whole page ad in the first 15 pages of the Sunday Tele – and to an extent all publicity is good publicity.
More seriously, I think it is scandalous and reprehensible behaviour on the part of the paper.
Before I get into why, let me say that as those who know me and follow my nusings will attest I am a staunch advocate of consumers and believe it is absolutely necessary that we are truthful in all our communications.
In this case we believe we have been, and we have substantiated it and we provided that substantiation to the newspaper.
Think about how you would cook at home when following a recipe. Making a food product in a factory is not dissimilar. Our ‘recipe’ calls for 3% olive oil and sunflower oil to be added to potatoes. The factory followed that recipe. But, because we are relying on it, the factory goes a couple of steps further. It has calibration equipment which shows there is 3% added oil in a batch AND the factory has independent tests conducted on random batches. They all show 3% fat content so we have reason to be comfortable with our claims.
I can’t dispute or query the Sunday Telegraph tests because they won’t provide them to me (although I provided ours to them). On the phone the journalist indicated to me that one of their test results came up showing 2.8% transfats. Neither olive oil or sunflower oil have any transfat. In a batch process which just uses those two oils it would be impossible for one isolated sample to have transfat. The Sunday Tele didn’t report this finding but it raises questions in my mind about whether the samples they used were adulterated or tampered with, or whether they were even our chips.
The whole things looks to me like an unwarranted media beat-up. What prompted the story? Was it that we were a new product – hang on there are thousands of new products launched each year. Was it because we were a low fat product – there are hundreds of those and they didn’t test any other products.
It certainly isn’t balanced or appropriate reporting. The journalist also let me know that they had tested other brands of chips and found they had significantly more fat than listed on their nutritional panels yet they chose not to report that.
They singled us out and sought to beat us up. One has to ask the question why?
I don’t retreat from the fact that we must be truthful in our communications. We believe we have been. Regardless, we still have a product which has anywhere between 8 times and 12 times less fat than any other real potato chip product in the market.
It is a great product, which is unique and beneficial for health-conscious snackers. It is a great shame that The Sunday Telegrpah tries to put a lid on a start-up small business doing something beneficial for Australian consumers rather than tackling the American multi-national which dominates the category with their deep-fried, fat soaked alternatives.
kind regards
Tim
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Tim: if your product is as good as you say it is, why are you only focused on putting it in newsagencies and have not pushed it with conveneence stores?
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And here was I thinking your post was about everyone’s favourite Channel Ten Newsreader 🙂
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Hi Scott
We aren’t ignoring other types of retailers – we are happy to deal with convenience stores as well. It is just that we have no infrastructure. We have no sales people or delivery solutions. In the case of newsagents we have service providers who can do both. As we begin to find independent distributors we will push further afield.
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I’ve never bought crisps in a newsagency but my wife and I frequently eat “Sultry Sally” chips, perhaps twice per week. We’ve always purchased these chips at our local “Woolworths” supermarket and were unaware of their availability anywhere else.
As far as the fat content goes, neither my wife nor myself are anywhere near approaching being overweight but we buy the “Sultry Sally” crisps, mostly for the heart health benefits of a very low saturated fat content as well as the negligible trans fat content as described on the packaging’s nutrtion chart. It would therefore be of immense interest to my wife and me (as well as countless other health conscious consumers) to be reassured that the saturated and trans fat levels as described on the nutrition chart, are accurate.
Also, regarding Tim’s statement that neither olive oil nor sunflower oil contain trans fats, could be seen to be only half true. It is my understanding that no natural foods contain trans fats but that trans fats are a by product of the processing that takes place during the production of some foods. That is, that the oil used is hydrogenated to maintain freshness in the product, thereby producing trans fats. It’s a common process that has been used worldwide for many years but is only recently receiving publicity for the elevated rate of cardio vascular disease that trans fats are thought to be responsible for.
Thank you, kind regards, Mark Warner
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Hi Mark
Thaanks for your support.
I can reassure you that the level of transfat (and total saturated fat) is as we disclose on our nutritional panels.
We only use olive oil and sunflower oil. You are correct that transfat is created when vegetable oils are hydrogenated. Olive oil and sunflower oil are known as natural oils which are not hydrogenated and that is why we use them.
The beauty of our baking process is that the potatoes are not cooked in oil (the oil is sprayed on afterwards as a base for the flavouring). A normal potato chip is deep fried, generally in hydrogenated vegeatbale oils. Many fried foods use hydrogenated oils because, apart from extending the shelf life of the oils, they increase heat stability in the frying process.
My point in introducing the transfat issue was that I am more concerned about he veracity of ther test results than I am about the reality of our product.
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