BornFree
Making Baby Bottles Safer
Positioning BornFree as a Leading Consumer Health Advocate
The Challenge: Ninety-five percent of baby bottles on the market contain a hormone-disrupting chemical called Bisphenol A, otherwise known as BPA. In recent years, scientific consensus has confirmed that the chemical, used to harden plastic, causes cancer in animals, even at low doses. By 2006, BornFree, a company that produces BPA-free baby bottles, already enjoyed healthy sales among a devoted, niche audience. But it wanted to break into the mainstream.
Our Approach: Fenton knew reporters would be skeptical about stories that sounded too much like product pitches. We also knew that female consumers are more likely to buy a product when they know the company behind it is walking the walk. So we positioned BornFree executives as private-sector consumer health advocates. When a key California State Senate committee heard arguments on a proposed BPA ban in 2008, we made sure BornFree’s founders provided in-person testimony on both the dangers of BPA and business sense of toxic-free products. A few weeks later when the National Institutes of Health released its draft report on the hazards of BPA, we took out a full-page ad in USA Today and leveraged our relationships with reporters to cycle BornFree into their coverage about the growing market for safe alternatives. Soon after the NIH release, Canada announced a nationwide BPA ban; we again made sure BornFree got into the news cycle.
Progress, Accelerated: BornFree was covered in virtually every major national newspaper — USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal – as well as on “Good Morning America” and countless local TV stations. Today, BornFree is a leading corporate advocate for safe plastics in products for our kids. The company can barely keep up with its sales, and national legislation has been introduced to ban BPA from children’s products.
