The Beijing Youth Daily has been on Procter & Gamble’s ass for several weeks with this story:
On March 17, one Ms Song went to a supermarket and bought a box of Crest Whitestripes, a tooth whitening product with a magic effect. This product is quite new in the the Chinese market and P & G have not yet made local packaging for it, choosing instead to use the US packaging, covered by a Chinese sticker. Ms Song tore off the sticker, and found that the descriptions in Chinese and English are totally different:
The Chinese description:
Each box includes 28 pieces of teeth strips, 14 for upper teeth and another 14 for lower teeth.
The English description::
Each box includes 56 pieces of teeth strips, 28 for upper teeth and another 28 for lower teeth.
Photo from Beijing Youth Daily March 18:
After reading the explanation on upper right corner, Ms Song found more magic Whitestripe effects:
The Chinese version is::
Clinical tests show: Crest Whitestrips are guaranteed to make your teeth whiter in 7 days. The effects of the Whitestrips in this box will last 12 months.
But the English version is::
Continuous use for 14 days will keep your teeth white for 6 months.
The effect of product in the Chinese package is four times of its original US one.
In today’s Beijing Youth Daily, a senior manager of P & G ‘external affairs’ department gave this explanation: “After long clinical testing and consumer tracking, we found that our product can achieve the effect of making teeth white in 7 days, an effect which lasts for one year”. The manager also said that this conclusion was approved by the China Dentist Association, so they modified the slogan on package accordingly.
But a senior member from the China Dentist Association said that the Association only made an evaluation for the tooth-whitening effect, not for the length of the effect. The State Quality Supervison Bureau is now involved in this issue and has asked P & G to provide detailed data.
Leaving aside questions of quality or effect, if P & G had got it together to design proper packaging for the Chinese market before launching the product, this little scandal would not have happened.
– Ben Marcom