December 2019 Spray 39
Mist:Understood is the first activation under the Make More
Magic division, aimed at bringing positive aerosol messaging to the
places most meaningful to young people—their local communities
and their digital devices—through which they explore the world.
Mist:Understood is focused on a sub-segment of today’s Millennials
because of their buying power and digital influence. Besides its
website, Mist:Understood uses Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as
its social media platforms.
Engagement tactics include Correcting Misconceptions by replying
to misinformed opinions about aerosols in a Did-You-Know
manner; utilizing Opportunistic Moments to keep an eye out for
positive and industry-relevant posts and conversations to re-tweet
or reply to; Capitalizing on Social Trends by creating unique
content that leverages popular topics to drive brand discovery and
Strategically Follow People by selecting only relevant brands, artists,
partners and potential influencers to follow.
As of August 2019, 5,460,012 total people have been reached
through the campaign. There have been 922,823 engagements
and video views and 13,952 total followers. The media spend until
this date has been almost $32,043.
Mike MacKay of DeSpray Environmental
presented “Aerosol Recycling: A Best
Kept Secret.” MacKay suggested that cradleto
grave management to protect the aerosol
brand is necessary in the future. Simply
recycling the metal components of a can
isn’t enough, as gas and liquids can also
be captured and reused for energy, such as
cooking fuels. The future public demand
for 100% recycling of all products, including
aerosols, is closer than we think. The
technology exists if the aerosol industry
chooses to use it, MacKay said.
Larry Beaver, VP of R&D at RSC Bio
Solutions, presented “Biodegradability
& Sustainability: Options, Adoption
& Growth.” Two issues are converging:
increasing regulations and environmental
concerns are coming up against dramatic
changes in environmentally acceptable
technology. Regulatory changes, end-user
perception and the demands of the big
box stores and large industrial users have
combined to drive the aerosol industry (and
most industries) toward more sustainable technologies perceived
as safer and better from a stewardship perspective. These technology
drivers cross product lines as well as continents. As marketers
struggle to advance product lines, they are relying heavily on
their formulators and raw material suppliers for support. Yet
not everyone has a common understanding of the needs of the
marketplace and those needs often differ from product-to-product
or market-to-market around the world. Common terms such as
“sustainable,” “renewable” and “biodegradable” are bandied about
and can mean very different things to different parties involved in
regulating, developing, marketing and purchasing new products,
aerosol or otherwise.
In response, many customers have evaluated bio-based products
over the past decade or longer. Bio-based products contributed
$459 billion to the U.S. economy in 2016, up 17% from 2014.
Jobs in the bio-based sector have increased 10% over 2014. Some
have adopted bio-based raw materials, but many have not due to a
variety of factors such as poor experiences, unacceptable performance,
prohibitive product cost, lack of broader adoption and
integration plans and unclear benefits to stakeholders. All of these
factors are rooted in the confusion that surrounds bio-based or
sustainable options.
Cassandra Taylor, Senior Regulatory
Consultant, Nexreg Compliance, presented
“Properties Testing & Technical
Translation.” Having accurate translations
is particularly important if authoring safety
information such as safety data sheets
(SDS) for hazardous products. SDS are the
primary source of hazard communication
for chemicals and a bad translation could
result in serious injury or death; one mistake
can distort the whole message.
Creating a literal translation of an SDS
does not guarantee that the translated SDS is compliant for its
intended audience. This is especially relevant for the EU because
there are often additional member State requirements for safety
information.
SDS generation software typically has a library of statements in
different languages that can be used in documents. However, some
languages are not included in SDS generation software and may
need to be outsourced for translation upon request.
There are thousands of different languages and dialects around
the globe and it is important to ensure that you are communicating
effectively to a desired audience. Acronyms can be tricky
because some languages will take an acronym from the translation
while others keep the English acronym. For example, in English
as well as Finnish, Greek and Czech, the acronym LEL (lower explosive
limit) doesn’t change even though the translations in these
languages are quite different. However, the French, Dutch and
German languages use their own acronyms for this phrase, which
comes from the translated text (LIE, OEG and UEG, respectively).
French Canadians read and speak a slightly different kind of
French than Europeans. Spanish in Spain is different from Latin
American Spanish and the same goes for European Portuguese
versus Brazilian Portuguese. Automatic translation websites such
as Google Translate can be a handy resource for quickly verifying
translations that have been obtained from other sources. However,
there can serious problems if these translators are used as a
primary source for technical translations.
Grammar conventions and word choice can change depending
on the context of the phrase in some languages. It is best to get
the entire statement translated all at once to save the headache of
MacKay
Beaver
Taylor
Regulatory Roundtable from left: Nhat Nguyen, Chemical Watch; Cassandra
Taylor, Nexreg Compliance; Doug Raymond, 3R; Nicholas Georges, HCPA;
Lori Parker, Arylessence, with Moderator Dan Padgett in background.