Nestle has had a very serious social media meltdown over the last 8 weeks. Their Facebook page and YouTube videos have been under relentless pressure from Greenpeace and like minded individuals over their policies of buying palm oil. Greenpeace accuses Nestle of supporting deforestation and threatening the Orangutan monkeys with extinction.
Greenpeace created a video which likened eating a Kit Kat bar to killing an Orangutan. That video was placed on YouTube and has received over a quarter of million views to date.
First Mistake: Nestle moved to have the video removed, which angered the Greenpeace members. Nestle claimed the video violated their trademark. Which is most likely true, however the removal angered Greenpeace so much that they organized their members to start making comments on the Nestle Facebook page.
Second Mistake: Nestle then moved to protect their Facebook page by removing critical comments and removing comments where the user had changed their profile picture to one of the altered Nestle Logo. (The image above was the most popular.) This move by Nestle angered Greenpeace more and caused a movement of their supporters to flock to the Nestle page and post more and more negative comments and more images of the altered logo.
Third Mistake: Continuing to do something and expecting the results to change. Nestle continued to remove comments with the altered logo from their Facebook until about March 19th. At which time Nestle proudly announced their intention to use only sustainable Palm Oil by…(wait for it) 2015! Just 5 short years from now.
Marketing Profs ran a great story on Nestlé’s missteps on April 22.
Fourth Mistake: Obviously this thorn in Nestlé’s side was growing into a festering wound. It must have been a major topic of conversation at many high level meetings. However the sweet giant kept all of their deliberations quiet, none of the “we’re considering our options” talk would leak out of the chocolate halls. This lack of transparency and apparent unconcern was translated into disdain and unfeeling by the Greenpeace movement. When yours is the only voice in the room people have a tendency to listen. Nestlé’s silence spoke volumes.
Finally They Get It: Nestle began a traditional slow speed counter movement making several environmental statements and announcing initiatives. But the dogs had already smelled blood and wouldn’t be driven off of the trail (perhaps not the best ecological analogy, how about this one) dolphins were playing in the storm tossed waves and couldn’t be lured away from their fun.
Mar 19–Nestle
Apr 13–Nestle
And then Greenpeace announces:
Sweet Success: Nestle Takes Action to Protect Paradise
Posted by: rolf | 17 May 10 |
How could Nestle have avoided this mess?
TRANSPARENCY:
Without a doubt the executives at Nestle were concerned about the Greenpeace issues. Most likely there are several senior executives who are actually environmentally sensitive themselves. You may believe they are all heartless bastards but that’s simply not the case, they are people like you and me. But if they had told people they are trying to find ways to work this out, make everyone happy and protect the environment, things would have cooled down.
SILENCE:
When you’re talking at a snail’s pace, and everyone around you is talking like JFK you’re going to lose. Issuing a press release every 2 weeks would have worked 5 years ago, maybe. But today we have CNN and MSNBC and you don’t stand a chance if that’s your PR plan. You must meet the medium with the medium and respond in kind and in pace. Silence is deafening.
AUTHENTICITY:
It’s clear when you tell me you’re concerned about my problem and you’re doing everything you can to help me and your honest goal is to do it by 2015- Five years from now! That you’re full of BS. You know it, I know it, and everyone else knows it too. That part is obvious to everyone. Stop being a jackass and be real.
The Damages:
It is apparent that this movement has not hurt Nestlé’s stock price which is currently outperforming the Dow. It remains to be seen if they are hurt in any substantial way, although it’s unlikely since the event has now culminated. There are likely a core of Greenpeace supporters who will avoid Nestle products for a long while. And if Nestle backslides on their commitment to Greenpeace the movement may be easily resurrected.
But there can be no doubt that we have seen the first case of successful environmental activitism which took place mainly in social media. Following on the heels of this success we can expect more of the same.
Prediction:
There will be a new sub-specialization of experts in social media crisis damage response.
16 responses so far ↓
1 Lucretia Pruitt // May 25, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Love your analysis on this. I think we’ve already got some folks working in the “Crisis Response” aspect of Social Media – but I think you’re right that we’re going to see a lot more in light of recent crises like this one.
Clearly, traditional methodology is insufficient to meet the crisis that occurs in the real-time media environment of Social Media.
Awesome write up Chris!
2 Some Aren’t So Hungry For Nestle Anymore « The Customer Comes First // Oct 7, 2010 at 9:16 pm
[...] use it to interact positively, openly and appropriately with customers in a timely manner. The issue began with a Greenpeace campaign that accused Nestle of supporting deforestation by purchasing [...]
3 Chris Kieff // Oct 19, 2010 at 11:10 am
Thanks Lucretia. Nestle just kept making serious blunders it seems without any competent advice on how to deal with the social media world. And thank you for your kind words.
Chris
4 Min favoritkonversation från Nestléskandalen | TrulyTherese // Nov 30, 2010 at 5:34 pm
[...] Det här är alltså inte så man ska hantera en kris via sociala medier. Om du missat detta, kan jag tipsa om att läsa storyn och lärdomarna från när Nestlé trampade i socialamedie-klaveret. [...]
5 Social Media’s Place in PR « Aversapr's Blog // Dec 2, 2010 at 9:56 pm
[...] it is easy for organizations to fall victim to social media. Nestlé recently crumpled under the social media’s pressure when Greenpeace accused it of using palm oil [...]
6 Social Media: re-introducing common sense? « Deliriant Isti Romani (These Romans are mad!) // Dec 21, 2010 at 12:57 am
[...] all seen and read the horror stories about organisations like Nestle and various governments and politicians getting it wrong (the list is endless and you no doubt have [...]
7 Vincent Kernaghan // Feb 18, 2011 at 3:10 am
Did you write this article before or after the one where you said, “Fire the Social Media Manager”? This is exactly one of the points I was making in my response in that article, but I suspect it happened in spite of having a Social Media Manager in the mix. It reads like the Nestles Orangutans in the top of the tree had louder voices than the monkeys who were actually running the social.
You did a good job on this article and the identification of Nestle’s mistakes. It’s amazing how so many companies still fall down the stairs in these situations.
8 "Trust me I'm a social media expert" | hop. skip. giant leap // Feb 20, 2011 at 3:28 am
[...] We’ve all heard the horror stories - who would be surprised if Nestlé abandoned the platforms altogether? [...]
9 Enhanced consumer power through social media (collection of cases) | Few bits on social network analysis // Jul 5, 2011 at 4:38 am
[...] crisis: a) PRweek (19 March, 2010) b) Jeremian (22 March, 2010) c) Grant Smith (21 March, 2010) d) Chris (19 May, [...]
10 6 Ways Renewable Energy Companies Can Succeed Using Social Media | BeckermanVoices // Aug 15, 2011 at 8:53 pm
[...] Wonderful stories about Ford, Starbucks and Coca Cola or disastrous stories about Kenneth Cole, Nestle and others. What do these companies have in common? They’re all major consumer brands — [...]
11 How Not to do Social Media Case Study – Southern Illinois University Carbondale Facebook Page « Derek DeVries – Imprudent Loquaciousness // Nov 9, 2011 at 6:12 pm
[...] the Nestle Case Study in “How Not to Do Social Media” demonstrated, trying to censor social media is an exercise in futility. Students have already [...]
12 You Can’t Bury a Facebook Screw-Up | Mike McCready // Jan 10, 2012 at 12:34 am
[...] The impact of this mistake goes far beyond those who saw the posts. Blog posts like this one will use this as an example of what not to do. People will be talking about this long after today. I’m surprised that Boners BBQ didn’t learn from past mistakes of companies like Nestle. [...]
13 Orangina fools fans with fake fans profiles on Facebook >> about the ethics of social media « Connecting with people is about looking beyond lines. // Feb 15, 2012 at 1:17 pm
[...] attitude of Gontran Paillez, the guy who is behind this, reminds me of the famous Kit Kat story where a stubborn social media manager damaged the brand globally in a couple of days because he was [...]
14 London Calling » Are you ready for a social media crisis? // Jun 5, 2012 at 7:37 am
[...] – but when something bad happens, you need to be prepared.I bet Nestle never expected to have a firestorm erupt around them back in 2010, and Eurostar were ill prepared for 5 trains stuck in the channel tunnel [...]
15 Crisis Heating Up for Progresso? | paulgillin.com // Jun 28, 2012 at 11:11 am
[...] It’ll be interesting to see if the company learns from past mistakes of brands like Nestle and Chapstick, which inadvertently escalated customer attacks by deleting Facebook comments they [...]
16 The Parody Accounts Strike Again | E & V Group // Jul 5, 2012 at 8:27 am
[...] easy to throw all this trust away by acting too much like a corporate bully. Some brands (including Nestlé) have learned this lesson the hard way. Ask yourself if the parody account is really harming your [...]