How we rescued a failing notice effort

Remington Arms Class Action Litigation

Signal was retained to design and implement the Supplemental Notice Plan in the Remington Arms Class Action Litigation (Pollard v. Remington Arms Company, No. 4:13-CV-00086-ODS), a product liability class action alleging millions Remington firearms were defective and posed a serious safety risk.

In preliminarily approving a proposed settlement that gave class members an opportunity to have the defect repaired for free, the court authorized a traditional notice campaign (run by a different firm) consisting of direct mail, social media advertising, a press release, and publication notice in consumer magazines.

After the initial notice campaign “resulted in an appalling claims rate,” the Honorable Judge Ortrie D. Smith of the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Missouri denied final approval of the settlement and ordered the parties to propose a Supplemental Notice Plan.

That’s when Signal stepped in.

In Signal’s role as supplemental notice provider, we designed a program that employed data analytics to define and identify the makeup of the consumers in the class, created ads targeted to those consumers, and tested the ads among three cohorts encompassing over 150,000 potential class members. This data-backed optimization strategy immediately led to better results. Following pre-program media testing and court approval of the program, the full-scale effort ran over five weeks.

Signal’s innovative notice program accounted for a nearly 1,000% increase in claims.

In finally approving the settlement, Judge Smith emphasized the efficacy of the social media campaign Signal designed and implemented.

“One of the lynchpins of the supplemental notice utilized by the parties was their targeted social media campaign. Through this method of notice, the notice reached more than four million individuals, and the advertisements were clicked more than 375,000 times… Given the popularity of social media in the United States, the use of targeted social media to notify class members was yet another reasonable component of the notice plan.”
Order and Opinion Granting Parties’ Joint Motion for Final Settlement Approval, Pollard v. Remington Arms Company, No. 4:13-CV-00086 (W.D. Mo.)
Key Program Elements

Claims Over Time:The Signal Impact

Use the yellow slider bar to view how we affected the trajectory of claims.

Traditional Notice Signal's Impact
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INCREASE IN CLAIMS
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CLAIMS AS OF JULY 2017
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INDIVIDUALS REACHED IN 4 WEEKS