Monsanto Company

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Monsanto Company

800 N Lindbergh Blvd.
St. Louis, Missouri 63167
USA
Telephone: (314) 694-1000
Fax: (314) 694-8394
Web site: www.monsanto.com

MONSANTO IMAGE CAMPAIGNS

OVERVIEW

In 1994 St. Louis-based agribusiness giant Monsanto introduced Posilac, a drug designed to raise cows' milk production. Sold through the company's dairy division, formerly known as Protiva, the product was marketed to dairy farmers; yet in order to gain larger acceptance for Posilac, it became necessary to sell the public on the drug, which contained the genetically engineered chemical BST, or bovine somatotropin. The company began a limited image campaign for the product in 1994, and it used methods that by 1998 gained much wider exposure for its genetically modified (GM) food products, primarily in Europe. Concerns over GM foods both at home and abroad, where one of Monsanto's outspoken critics was England's Prince Charles, motivated the company to invest $1.6 million in its European campaign in 1998, along with an undisclosed amount on U.S. advertising. British ads were created by the firm of Bartle Bogle Hegarty and in the United States by the St. Louis office of the Sargent & Potratz advertising agency. Monsanto spent $80 million overall on consumer advertising in 1998.

Monsanto made a variety of chemical products, including Roundup, one of the world's leading herbicides; and NutraSweet, the leading artificial sweetener; and a number of pharmaceuticals, marketed through its Searle line. Monsanto products had not been without controversy, however, and that was particularly true of Posilac and GM foods. From a financial standpoint and in terms of distribution, Posilac had proven a success by the end of 1998, with Monsanto reporting that 100 million doses of the drug had been distributed since it began marketing more than four years before. But image concerns remained, suggesting an uncertain future for consumer advertising on the part of the company. Trade advertising, on the other hand, seemed relatively stable.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Despite the fact that its products were as much a part of daily life as the areas they addressed, Monsanto itself was hardly a household name. Founded in 1901 by John Queeny in St. Louis, the company's first product was saccharin, a popular sugar substitute until the advent of Monsanto's own NutraSweet. The company went public in 1927, by which time its products included caffeine, aspirin, and other chemical goods. During World War II, it supplied the first synthetic tires used by the U.S. Army.

In the 1960s and 1970s the company introduced several herbicides, the most successful being Roundup, which debuted in 1973. In the preceding year, Monsanto discontinued saccharin production, and later bought the licensing rights to NutraSweet, the brand name for the artificial sweetener aspartame. This occurred in 1985, the same year the company acquired the G.D. Searle pharmaceuticals firm. In 1993 it enhanced its already large lawn-care line with the purchase of Ortho from Chevron.

In the mid-1990s, under the leadership of former Searle executive Robert Shapiro, the company expanded its pharmaceutical offerings, and in 1996 purchased a minority interest in DEKALB Genetics. In collaboration with DEKALB, Monsanto introduced a strain of soybean which could withstand herbicides such as Roundup. During this period, it also greatly expanded its agribusiness area, moving more and more into GM foods.

In 1994 Monsanto introduced Posilac, and after winning Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the use of the bovine somatotropin product, it was required to undertake a thorough post-approval study. The company presented the results to the FDA's Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee (VMAC) in November 1996. In a hearing to assess the study, VMAC addressed two questions, according to Food Chemical News: "whether the proposed revised label for Posilac provided adequate directions for farmers [on the use of the product] and whether the results of Monsanto's Post-Approval Monitoring Program adequately addressed the safety of the milk supply. After daylong presentations, the Food and Drug Administration's advisory committee answered yes to both questions."

TARGET MARKET

The FDA and VMAC were hardly the only barriers Monsanto had to face in gaining approval for Posilac, however; there was public opinion to consider. Technically, the consumers of Posilac had no opinion, since they were cows, not humans. As for the cows' owners, dairy farmers in the United States and Europe, a large portion were enthusiastic about a product that would enhance profitability on their farms. But there were the consumers of dairy products to consider; and as with other twentieth-century technological innovations, such as nuclear power or experiments in cloning, chemical enhancement of food production frightened many people.

Almost from the beginning, Posilac encountered criticism from consumer groups concerned about the potential side effects of using drugs to enhance milk production. The company's first response in the form of advertising came with a 30-second television commercial run exclusively in the key dairy state of Wisconsin. The company targeted the February 1994 spot for that state, a Monsanto spokesman told Robert Steyer of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "because it's been the hotbed of activity. We thought it might get our message out better."

By 1998 Monsanto had come to increasingly position itself as a so-called life sciences company rather than as a chemical manufacturer. In so doing, it keyed in on the growing interest among the baby-boomer population in enhancing their lifestyles or, to use a variation on an old DuPont advertising slogan that fell into disfavor during the 1960s, "better living through chemistry." Stephanie Thompson reported in Brandweek in 1998 that "nutraceuticals," scientifically developed food products, were gaining acceptance among baby boomers, and Monsanto developed much of its marketing around this trend. Its food and nutrition businesses, Thompson wrote, were "all newly repositioned under the banner of 'Food, Health, Hope.'" Thus a company spokesman told her that Monsanto was well-positioned to "take the best of all areas and identify the consumer market and consumer needs that other companies aren't qualified to do."

COMPETITION

Chemicals to increase food production, or a drug that could enhance milk production by 10 to 20 percent, were bound to have their adherents, and not just among farmers. Central to the 1994 Wisconsin television spots was Dr. Ronald E. Kleinman, associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and former chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics's nutrition committee. In the commercials Kleinman, who reportedly received no payment for his endorsement, announced that Posilac was every bit as "safe, nutritious, and wholesome" as the milk produced by cows who had not used it. He also warned viewers, "Don't let anyone scare you into reducing milk consumption."

The primary competition for Posilac or GM foods came not from other agribusiness companies such as Archer Daniels Midland or ConAgra, but from consumer groups and others who were just as likely to oppose the efforts of those companies to create better living—and better food production—through chemistry. Taking a sardonic tone, Kirkpatrick Sale wrote in the Nation in early 1999, "The old Monsanto was a chemical company, and had been since 1901, but its chemical division was spun off into a separate company in 1997. The new Monsanto is, as it puts it, 'a life sciences company,' which means that it is interested in creating, controlling, patenting, and profiting from life." Sale went on to note that "bovine growth hormone, though it has been adopted by enough dairy farmers in the United States to make it a profitable line, is still resisted by many farmers and consumers." Much of the opposition came from the same baby-boomer population segment that, according to Thompson's 1998 Brandweek report, had become increasingly more open to the idea of scientifically enhanced food products. If ever there was a baby-boomer-style company, it was Ben & Jerry's ice cream, which according to Sale won a lawsuit that allowed it to label its ice cream as being free of all recombinant bovine growth hormones.

In fact, Ben & Jerry's home state of Vermont passed a bill requiring that suppliers of bovine growth hormones be licensed by the state agricultural commissioner. In January 1998 Monsanto challenged the legislation with a letter to Governor Howard Dean, state agriculture commissioner Leon Graves, and members of the Vermont dairy industry. Governor Dean later indicated that he would veto the bill, but only because an apparent majority of Vermont farmers opposed it.

Monsanto faced similar challenges over genetically modified foods in Europe in 1997 and 1998. When the company hired British ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty to create an image campaign in 1997, the agency's Soho office was besieged by a group of naked protesters. No less a figure than Charles, the Prince of Wales, weighed in against GM foods in June 1998, saying, "We don't know the long-term consequences for human health and the wider environment of releasing plants bred in this way."

MARKETING STRATEGY

Monsanto's 1998 image efforts for Posilac in the United States were muted compared to the campaign it ran simultaneously in Britain to counter fears concerning GM foods, and indeed the latter effort illustrates much about Monsanto image advertising on either side of the Atlantic. The Bartle Bogle Hegarty ads, launched in June 1998, were "designed to be objective and considered [that is, thoughtful] rather than 'adsy' or gimmicky," according to Ruth Nicholas in Marketing, "and to provide information and present the strengths of GM foods in a measured way." A Monsanto representative told Nicholas, "We want to give people information, and we are quite comfortable with the coverage."

As part of the three-month campaign, Monsanto urged customers to call a toll-free information line, visit its website—and even obtain the views of opposing organizations. Advertising warned that in the future, foods without genetically modified ingredients would become increasingly expensive. This led to a backlash from many groups, despite the company's apparent efforts at openness. A representative of the environmental activist organization Greenpeace told Alex Scott of Chemical Week, "If you compare [Monsanto's] campaign with any previous ones, it tells an interesting story—that of ignoring consumer concern. Consumers don't need a fancy advertising campaign. They need better labeling."

GETTING THE MESSAGE ACROSS—INSIDE THE COMPANY

Julekha Dash in Software Magazine compared the corporate culture at Monsanto's dairy division, formerly known as Protiva, to that of an Ivy League university. "Okay," Dash admitted, "so the St. Louis-based provider of agricultural and pharmaceutical goods isn't exactly Harvard University." But consultants with Renaissance, an information technologies firm, "say the atmosphere of the 150-person [division] … was similar to the one you find in the academic world. Employees are highly trained scientists with PhDs and specialties in areas such as biology, chemistry, and genetics. And they guard their knowledge carefully."

Naturally they guard that knowledge from Monsanto's competitors—but what happens when members of a company's brain trust keep information from each other? "That was the problem," Dash wrote. "The fiercely independent culture of this group conflicted with Monsanto's knowledge management program, a company-wide strategic initiative whose objectives necessitated that employees share information using collaborative tools." Renaissance attacked the problem by arranging regular sessions in which management explained decisions to employees and stressed the contributions of individuals to overall performance. Under the guidance of Renaissance consultants, software developers at Protiva engaged in workshops and training sessions that offered an opportunity for various professionals to gather and discuss collaboration methods. Using these and other measures, Renaissance ran a pilot phase of its new program with the objective of involving three project teams in the process. Results exceeded expectations, with a total of eight teams involved by the end of the four-week pilot phase in January 1998. "What we managed to convince" the group, a Renaissance executive told Dash, "is [that] it is their collective knowledge that brings power. That was a major milestone."

Greenpeace and other activist groups were not the only forces arrayed against Monsanto's efforts to enhance the company image and educate the public concerning its scientific innovations in food production. When Monsanto's international government affairs director Marcia Hale said that "it will become very expensive for the manufacturer and the consumer" not to use GM foods in the future, a representative of the British supermarket chain Iceland referred to this as a "frightening" sign of things to come. Iceland became the first retail chain in Britain to refuse to market foods with GM ingredients.

OUTCOME

In March 1999 the United Kingdom Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld 6 of 13 complaints filed by the Green Party, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and other groups of environmentalists against Monsanto. The ASA report claimed that the company had provided "misleading" information in the campaign. During the same month, Sale's lengthy article in the Nation noted that the image campaign had arrived in the United States, using the slogan "Biodiversity … matters to Monsanto."

In response to criticisms, the company produced and distributed a "Report on Sustainable Development" in late 1998. The report acknowledged that "some of what we're doing—especially in agricultural biotechnology—raises questions in the minds of many people." It also promised that "we'll continue to listen to all points of view … and to engage in honest and respectful communications." In line with the strategy of openness that Monsanto had used in its European campaign, the report even included statements from detractors such as the German Friends of the Earth, another environmental group.

Monsanto switched its U.S. advertising account in January 1999 from Sargent & Potratz, which thereupon closed its St. Louis office, to Osborne & Barr. According to the Delaney Report, the company "is finding that its problems in areas such as pharmaceuticals and biotechnology are having a spill-over impact on how it markets its products to consumers." As a result, it planned to drastically cut its $80 million global consumer advertising budget. A source told the Delaney Report, "There is a 'tomorrow' mentality at [Monsanto] right now. Marketing money for today is being put on hold while management regathers itself for the future."

Although the company had faced a number of challenges in its image marketing to consumers, products such as Posilac continued to thrive. In December 1998 Monsanto reported that 100 million doses of the drug had been sold since its introduction four and a half years before. Furthermore, a company representative told Food Chemical News, "Sales [of Posilac] are increasing. Our sales this year are 30 percent higher than in 1997, and sales in 1997 were up 30 percent over 1996."