Ezekiel Elliott and the Red Kettle

By now you've certainly heard of Ezekiel Elliott of the Dallas Cowboys leaping into the Salvation Army's red kettle after scoring a touchdown Sunday night against Tampa Bay. His jump led to a major increase in donations to the charitable organization in the hours and days that followed, vastly outperforming the same time periods last week and even last year.

Money going to a charitable cause such as this is a good thing.

The red kettles beyond each end zone aren't new. The two organizations have been holiday partners since 1997. The Salvation Army's National Red Kettle Campaign has been a staple for over 125 years. Charlotte Jones Anderson, daughter of the boss, is Executive Vice President/Chief Brand Officer of the team and a past Chairman of the Salvation Army's National Advisory Board, serving in that role from 2010-2014.

Cowboys Head Coach Jason Garrett talked about how "Lambeau Leaps" at Packers games are legal but how his team got a 15-yard penalty for Elliott's jump. Team owner and General Manager Jerry Jones dared the NFL to fine him, saying he'd take it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The hashtag #kettlehop is still getting attention on Twitter. Many people contributed $21, corresponding to Elliott's jersey number. I've even seen t-shirts made.

These signs all point to the Salvation Army and what they're trying to do, and they lead me to believe that this was an orchestrated public relations/fundraising effort. I feel like whomever scored first, whether it was Dez Bryant, Jason Witten, or Dak Prescott, had instructions to jump into the kettle, stand next to it or whatever. At some point during the game someone was going to call attention to the campaign.

I'm not criticizing the move-- the money that's raised goes toward feeding people and keeping them warm. It just has elements of a good PR campaign put together by people who knew what they were doing.

A tip of the cap to the Cowboys and the Salvation Army for coming together.

Chobani and Recalls

Hamdi Ulukaya bought an abandoned factory in New York in 2005 and started Chobani yogurt two years later, figuring he could make a better product than what the American companies were cranking out.

Ulukaya grew things to where he was moving well over a million cases of yogurt per week out of his New York warehouse, getting a solid foothold in the market, and even fielding calls with buyout offers.

So things were going very well.

But in 2013 things took a bad turn. The year started out well enough, as Chobani opened a second facility in Idaho to keep up with demand as well as to gain access to western markets. However the dairy inputs (different cows from a different part of the country) used in Idaho were different than what was used in New York, so the resulting yogurt was different, forcing them to adjust the proportions of the ingredients used. This led to delays and then in September a mold contamination problem at the Idaho plant.

The machine at Chobani swung into action, first recalling their product by contacting individual stores for a week or so before issuing the formal recall.

Public relations-wise, several positive steps were taken. They were active on social media, issuing an apology via Facebook that had the yogurt's defective code as well as a head shot of Ulukaya. They also reached out on Twitter and posted an apology letter to their website's homepage. The letter is well-written and thought out, and leads me to believe they had a template in place in order to be prepared for an event like this.

The homepage also had links to the FDA's report and the customer call center.

So Chobani's troubles (and $15 million loss in 2013) seem to connect more with growing pains and not with bad public relations, since they made wise choices to try and keep the public's trust after the mold contamination.

The company seems to have righted the ship, and now their problems have more to do with competition as well as a slowing of the market.