COMPANY: FiberGel Technologies
TIMEFRAME: April 2005-ongoing
BUDGET: N/A
Fat kids. Where would Phillip Versten's PR efforts be without them?
The nationwide concern over childhood obesity has been a boon to Versten who, as communications director at Circle Group Holdings subsidiary FiberGel
Technologies (Mundelein, Ill.), is charged with drumming up public attention for his company's fat-substitute ingredient Z-TRIM, a corn-based gel that replaces at least half
the oil or fat in certain recipes.
Starting this spring, Versten has turned the "chubby epidemic," as he calls it, to his advantage, leveraging news coverage by introducing Z-TRIM into public-school
cafeterias.
As schools have signed on to adapt the food substitute, Versten has reached out to reporters covering education and health.
"I am typically talking to a school's editor who heard about our conversations with the local school people, and that editor wants to be kept up to date on the progress so
that, when the fall school session resumes, he will have it as a story," he says. It's hardly a surprise that the media are listening. According to the consumer-trends gurus at
ACNeilsen, the obesity hype has been a virtual PR factory.
The stir began in early 2001, when then-U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher cited obesity as being a major cause of premature death in Americans. The inevitable lawsuits
followed, and food companies in turn "have invested in campaigns promoting exercise and balanced diets, and denied that their products were at the root of America's fat problem,"
ACNeilsen noted in a recent "TrendWatch" column on its Web page.
The site added: "Hershey Foods and McDonald's gave grants to the International Food Information Council to set up a Web site to encourage children to
exercise more. Trade groups joined forces last year to help fund obesity research and lobby Congress to make schools require gym classes."
Bottom line? The media have paid close attention, making it all that much easier for Versten to spread the Z-TRIM gospel via school cafeterias.
While some schools have had specific issues surrounding the nutritional value of their food, Versten has tried to stay away from pursuing such prey.
"You can scan the headlines and try to target those that happen to be in the news, but that is more like just chasing what is out there. We wanted to be more methodical by
starting in our own back yard," he says.
Z-TRIM is based on corn. So is most of Illinois. Versten, therefore, made his first stop at the Illinois Association of Public Schools "just because they had a
substantial mailing list." The Web site alone has provided contact information for some 832 school-district superintendents. An introductory letter invited a smattering of these
superintendents them to try a sample kit, which included a variety of Z-TRIM-based snacks.
As PR strategies go, this one has its potential drawbacks. Success in a single school cafeteria may generate some word-of-mouth buzz, but the scale likely will be limited
plus there is no guarantee that the media will want to follow up.
So, to get the most out the effort, Versten has begun casting a wide net, building a database of some 6,000 media contacts. These contacts range from small news outlets to
heavy hitters in print and broadcast -- basically anyone who might be interested in kids' health, education and obesity.
"I decided to shotgun it at the beginning and then to trim it from there, based on the responses," Versten says. So far, he adds, "it is not absolutely definitive yet, but it
is a lot clearer than when I started."
He continues to generate interest from health editors and from reporters already working the obesity beat, and he also targets publications with similar interests, such as
diabetes-related publications.
Working in Versten's favor is the fact that this is a mainstream story that has impact on most Americans.
When a recent study detailed health expenses relating to obesity, Versten could afford to play it cool.
Rather than blanket the world with a knee-jerk e-mail immediately tying his product to that finding, he waited to see who ran stories about the study. He then followed up
with an introductory letter to those who already had expressed interest.
"We told them 'this is not an issue that is going to go away. Be aware that I have a product that can address this issue, and solve a real societal and economic problem,'" he
says. And so the seeds are sewn, with the authors of the study having already done Versten's legwork.
So far, the numbers are running his way. Just weeks after the campaign's launch, more than two dozen superintendents had opened a dialog with FiberGel Technologies.
By June, stories had run in the, the Boston Herald, the Chicago Sun Times and Greater Houston Weekly along with interviews on Clear Channel Radio
and on transfatfree.com. The strategy has been successful and, as long as the media keeps the obesity tempest brewing, there is little likelihood that Versten will be
trimming his sales.
Contact: Phillip Versten, 847.549.6002, [email protected]
Making Hay With Someone Else's Seeds
For a PR executive, a new trend can be a beautiful thing. When a product's virtues coincide with public attention, lovely sparks can fly. But there's a hitch: How to jump on
the bandwagon without appearing to be driving it.
Phillip Versten, PR guru at FiberGel Technologies, contemplates that dilemma every day as he tries to capitalize on fat-kid hysteria in the media without seeming so
opportunistic as to jeopardize his chances for coverage. "If you have a truly remarkable story, you want to tell that story, but you don't want to sensationalize it" to satisfy
the trend, he says. "You have to walk the line."
His best advice is to ride the coattails of someone else's news: Follow up on wire-service stories to see who picks them up, and pitch editors in the wake of breaking
research. Versten daily follows Yahoo! News and the wire services. When he finds a study about, say, obesity and dementia, bells ring. Based on the interest shown by the media,
"that for me is immediately fodder for a press release," he says.