Danone Yogurt and Irresponsible Field Marketing
Last week, a company called Celsius Communications ran a field marketing promotion for Danone Yogurt. They were giving away little bottles of free yogurt at the corner of Granville and Robson. As Stephanie points out in this post on Urban Vancouver (with plenty of gross photos), they apparently didn’t provide adequate garbage containers for the empty bottles.
I didn’t see this first-hand, but it certainly looks like Celsius screwed up. They’re not helping their client with piles of their product kicking around the streets of Vancouver. The people consuming the beverage are also to blame, but Celsius should have anticipated the need for more garbage cans.
There are plenty of brands of yogurt out there. Next time you’re shopping, why don’t you steer clear of Danone?
UPDATE: I emailed somebody at Celsius Communications, and I appreciated that they sent a lengthy response. Here is part of it:
As I said to Stephanie, we did provide the garbages, but as nobody was using
them, after the sampling operation, I sent my staff with garbage bags to
clean up the 4 blocks surrounding Granville and Robson.Doing field marketing asks a lot more for the environment than what you saw
for a couple of hours at the corner of Granville and Georgia, and we take
care of that.
In fact, after every sampling event that Celsius Communication host for its
clients, we sent the staff to clean up the surrounding area to get rid of
the maximum empty bottles as we can. Then, we take care of recycling what we
picked up and emptied for the sampling.
I’m not sure what to say about this. It sounds like they tried to do a decent job, but weren’t quite up to the task? This is one reason I generally disdain giveaway-oriented field marketing (not to mention lousy free daily newspapers)–inevitably it results in excess, unnecessary litter and garbage.
François Trudel 
Anonymous 
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