Maple Leaf Foods – The Blog? Not Really

While researching a post about recovering from high profile upsets in companies, I was searching for a very obvious candidate: Maple Leaf Foods. With massive recalls due to listeriosis in many of their meat products, Maple Leaf Foods is no doubt battling to maintain their brand image of wholesome Canadian company.

One of the ways Maple Leaf Foods are employing to attempt a change in public opinion is with a blog, poorly titled: Our Journey to Food Safety Leadership. That in itself does not instil me with confidence. After all, do I want to eat food that was made on the journey to food safety. I prefer thinking the journey is done and that the food was prepared in the mecca of food safety.

Title aside, I was prompted to devote a post to this blog in particular because of a line I read in the Terms & Conditions of the blog: You may not create a link to this site or this blog without the prior written consent of Maple Leaf Foods.

There are newspaper sites that don’t want links and there are government sites that don’t allow linking, but maybe Maple Leaf Foods bloggers missed the memo about blogs. Seems a little anti-‘social’. This is my first clue that the Maple Leaf Foods blog is not really a blog – it exists from without the blogosphere. Blogs are to be interconnected in a social network, after all.

Second clue that the Maple Leaf Foods blog is not really a blog – it is too planned, too convoluted, too sterile. I will admit some of their posts waver on the edge of having a personal voice, but most sound like newsletter pieces. And where their aim is “a dialogue with interested Canadians and others as we continue on our journey to food safety leadership” I am surprised at the many positive comments on the blog and the lack of negative ones, especially where they insist that they:

want to hear from you – both the positive and the negative!  [They] will not censor comments that are critical of Maple Leaf or that Maple Leaf considers inaccurate, however [they] will respond to any misinformation or inaccuracies as required.

Now maybe I am wrong, but shouldn’t there be numerous negative comments. I find it hard to believe that no one interacting on the blogosphere would have something negative to say about Maple Leaf Foods. Nay – I find it impossible to believe that their blog has not been visited by at least one critical person. For all the open dialogue that is coming from this blog, why didn’t Maple Leaf Foods put together a shiny press kit.

FYI Maple Leaf Foods bloggers – it’s called SOCIAL media.

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