• Ad Age, Monday, May 10, 2010 10:46 AM

Jack Neff got an insider's look at Procter & Gamble and its public relations firm, Paine, as they sprang into action late last week following indications that a controversy over Dry Max Diapers causing diaper rash was going to hit national media big time. The company maintains that its product has been tested extensively and is safe.

Not that P&G was caught by surprise. A handful of employees are regularly stationed in the brand's "listening post" to monitor and categorize social-media chatter. Management has been following consumer reactions closely. "We've been having daily 7 a.m. conference calls among all the functions every morning, including weekends, about this since we got the first inkling," Jodi Allen, vp-North American baby care, says.

One thing the company found was that it didn't help much to directly engage critics on Facebook. It did learn a valuable lesson from a retired executive who recalled that Bounce, when it first came out in the Seventies, got blamed for a lot of clothes dryer fires that would have happened anyway.

"If there's any cover-up or much subterfuge in P&G's strategy, it was hard to spot in the three-and-a-half hours Ad Age observed the team directly on May 7," Neff writes, "or from other accounts of P&G's response."

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