Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Nestle's twitstorm

The Nestle Company recently purchased a very small percentage of their oil from a vendor that was not being responsible in their harvesting methods. Allegedly, the harvesting method was reducing the rainforest and Greenpeace was all over Nestle with a U-tube video. Nestle ceased purchasing from this vedor, but before they knew what was going on, their facebook fanpage grew exponentially and consumers without all the facts started berating Nestle. Whoever runs the fanpage at Nestle did the worst thing possible and started getting into spats with the fans. That’s when the problem gets out of control. Now Nestle is considering scrapping the page and starting over when the incident is old news. Here is a link to the story, note how the oil consumption from the disreputable source is only 1.25% of their overall use according to this post.

It certainly seems that Greenpeace went a little overboard considering the actual usage of oil was so small, and Nestle quickly ceased purchasing form the vendor. On the other hand, it is Greenpeace’s right to speak their mind, and social media has made it very easy. Really, it was Nestle who dropped the ball with their reaction to the whole thing. I’m not a big Greenpeace fan, I’ve always found their methods too rash. I do like Nestle and this stunt will not stop me from purchasing their product. I just think they need to re-think their social media campaign.

4 comments:

  1. I think that people are over reacting to the situation because they only 1.25% of their palm oil is coming from this source. I think that its teriable that these companies are destroying rain forests to make room for these factories.

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  2. You bring up a good point, I think if Nestle would have not replied to the user comments this wouldn't have gotten as out of control as it has.

    Greenpeace has a right to speak there mind...but I think this is a bunch of nonsense.

    I can't wait to eat a bunch of Nestle during Easter!!

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  3. I hate chocolate to begin with but kitkats are the only chocolate candy I will eat! but idk after that youtube video i will imagine eating fingers gross!! but I agree with you, i think it was a little overboard and yes Greenpeace did have a right to speak their mind and Nestle could have handled it a little bit better instead of lashing out. But i agree also I probably will not stop buying kitkats because like you said the amount is so small its not even funny. There are WAY worse things going on in our world, I mean come on people.

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  4. I do agree with you that the Greenpeace methods are way out of control. It almost sounds like they are looking for a large corporation to blame for deforestation so their organization gets some media attention. Despite their outrageous attacks, i don't think it was in Nestle's best interest to sarcastically retaliate on the fan page. This is quickly becoming social media crisis

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