The “RFK Factor” Risk to Brand Equity

By Mark Jeffreys, CEO, 4Sight

RFK taking to X to share the latest ingredient that he thinks should be banned has been background noise until now.  With the new Trump administration, RFK in particular has gone from white noise to the nominee who may lead the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) behind his “Make America Healthy Again” pledge.

While this pledge seems innocuous, the threat to ban several ingredients, such as Red Dye 40, and restricting other ingredients that he believes contribute to human health issues is real for brands.  The new list of potentially villainous ingredients may soon jump to hundreds.

As stewards of a brand, brand leaders in the past have been reassured that regulatory action has been based on “science consensus”.  As a result, the task of monitoring ingredient risk has mostly been left to those in R&D.  But the risk of a capriciously advocated-for ban is a potential social media PR disaster, which means that brand leaders and general managers need to be deeply engaged in the elevated risk to a brand’s equity.

Whether one is a fan or foe of RFK, one thing is clear: there is new uncertainty now in the regulatory environment as to what ingredients will or will not face a ban and when.  In the past, decisions on banning ingredients took years, so passively monitoring them was the right strategy.  For example, it took over eight years for the ingredient BPA to be banned in most applications.

RFK’s past statements indicate that future regulatory action may be based on science data that is not “science consensus” or based on stories in the news, and that action could happen at an expedited pace given a heightened political focus on these issues.  To avoid the pitfalls of a more capricious regulatory environment, three things are needed to prepare for the expected and unexpected.

First, it’s time to go from passive to active monitoring of both the “science consensus” and “junk science”.  In the past, some of non-databased “junk science” has been the Spark that ignites a Spread in the news, which creates a new perception among consumers.  They may not be from the most credible scientists with a high H index, been peer reviewed, or be published in credible journals, but their presence in the marketplace now carry an elevated risk for companies.

Second, perception in the news and social media is now even more of a reality, which means that business leaders need to have their finger on the pulse of what scientific data is spreading from organized news outlets and then to social media.  Over the past few years, there has been a risk of some of these “junk” scientific studies spreading.  But with RFK and other new regulatory leaders potentially latching onto science data in the news or social media that is not “consensus”, and scouting for ingredients to ban, there is an urgent need to get out ahead of this new reality.

Finally, businesses need a cohesive strategy for addressing these increased risks.  At P&G, we used a framework of Risk = Probability times Consequence. Prior to RFK, the probability of ingredient bans based on anything other than years of science consensus was fairly low.  Even if the consequence of that ban was high, it meant most business leaders could take a wait & see approach.  The “RFK factor” now increases that probability given the potential for decision making to be swayed by perceived science. As a result, the probability of ingredient bans will rise significantly with the new administration, even if the consequence of that ban remains the same – resulting in urgent formula or packaging changes and millions of dollars in added costs.

How business leaders get out ahead of these new risks may vary from manually monitoring them or leveraging machine learning platforms to try to look around the corner.  Whatever method is used, the need for a shift in business strategy is clear.  Business leaders can no longer afford to passively wait for a new Tweet to be caught off guard about the latest villainous ingredient.

There is no time to waste to manage the potential risk of the “RFK factor”.  The time to prepare for this C-Suite level risk is now.

About the Author

Mark Jeffreys is CEO, 4Sight, and a former P&G executive; Dr Richard Hughes, is a Professor at the Ohio State University in Physics and co-founder of 4Sight

 

Tags: AI