Dietary supplement retailer GNC Holdings has brought in Sard Verbinnen & Co. to help mount its PR defense against a probe by the New York attorney general into the ingredients of supplement products sold by major retailers.
NY AG Eric Schneidermann this month accused GNC, along with Target, Wal-Mart and Walgreens, of selling store brand supplements that could not be verified to contain labeled ingredients or that were found to contain ingredients not listed on product labels. He subpoenaed company records about the origins of ingredients in their supplments.
After an initial response Feb. 4 with its day-to-day PR firm MarketcomPR, Pittsburgh-based GNC, which is publicly traded, more forcefully refuted Schneidermann's claims Feb. 9 with the help of Sard and a point-by-point rebuttal of the AG's letter to the company. The company said it has pulled a small number of affected products from New York stores as it waits to hear a response to their challenge from Schneidermann.
GNC CEO Michael Arcbold said all of the company's products are submitted to "rigorous and generally acccepted testing before they reach of our customers." GNC, along with others in the supplement industry, are challenging the DNA barcoding test method relied on by the attorney general as unreliable. GNC said it and has sent the AG results of their own testing.
Sard Verbinnen managing directors Bryan Locke in Chicago and Bob Rendine in New York are guiding GNC's PR response.
Lo Isidro, senior director at Real Chemistry with more than a decade of strategic communications and PA experience, has joined Narrative Strategies.
Nelson Fernandez, former North American chair of APCO Worldwide and managing director of Burson-Marsteller, has joined Volunteers in Medicine Berkshires as director of communications and PA.
Lilit Bargar, who was most recently an EVP in the healthcare practice at Weber Shandwick, comes on board at GCI Health as EVP, corporate practice lead.
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