Building group James Hardie, which left NSW taxpayers to pick up the bill last year for funding shortfalls to its asbestos victims, has found enough cash to start marketing and advertising its products in Australia after "going dark" for a decade amid the scandal.
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Its Asia Pacific marketing head, George O'Neil, told Mumbrella that he is guiding the 127-year-old company back to public prominence via social media.
"We are not sitting there with hundreds of millions of dollars of media budget; we are lean," he told Mumbrella. It would also target the company at a younger demographic who would not so readily associate the company with its asbestos-tainted history.
"The younger people are, the less there is that stronger emotion, unless they are directly affected by it," said Mr O'Neil.
A quick search of a couple big social media sites reveals a James Hardie offical twitter account run out of its American operation and a very similar Facebook page for America and another in New Zealand.
The scandal of its asbestos legacy was compounded in 2001 when the company moved its operation offshore and set up what it claimed was a fully funded victim compensation fund.
The fund ended up being short funded to the tune of $1.5 billion.
Last year James Hardie washed its hands of any responsibility for a shortfall in compensation payments to asbestos victims as it reported robust profit growth and rewarded shareholders with a $US98 million special dividend on top of its second-half dividend of $US120.3 million.
#SandstoneBeige is a warm neutral that is sophisticated & inviting. Explore all colours here: https://t.co/cYQehhQk8w pic.twitter.com/jfYkJuGLkL— James Hardie (@James_Hardie) May 4, 2016
Just months before, Andrew Constance, who was then NSW Treasurer, agreed to increase the state's loan facility to the Asbestos Injuries Compensation Fund (AICF) by more than $100 million after a blowout in expensive mesothelioma claims threatened to leave the fund short of cash for future claims.
Mr O'Neil said that its market research provided surprising results about how popular its products are with the Australian public.
"We were surprised when we started doing focus groups, there is actually a huge amount of love out there for the brand and for the products we make," he said.
