Sugar Rush, or just Plain Stupid?

It seems Nestle have fallen victim to the ‘anti-social media’ bug recently and now faces a public relations disaster because of their appalling handling of their Facebook fan page.   These pages are now deemed a necessity for almost any company, and more often than not are a great way to keep in contact with their ‘fans’.  However, Nestle have shown how not to do it!

Environmentalist group Greenpeace have long been putting pressure on Nestle to stop them using palm oil in their products.  Through social media, they have released documents, pictures and a particularly provocative viral on Youtube.  Be warned, the video is quite nauseating: http://bit.ly/aSZbIu

At the time of its release, Nestle lobbied to have the video removed, citing a copyright complaint.  All this resulted in was plenty of free, powerful press for Greenpeace.  The world of social media is notoriously anti-establishment in its nature, a company like Nestle should therefore have learned from their mistakes.  But they didn’t, they made it even worse for themselves.

Greenpeace had encouraged their supporters to change their profile pictures to anti-nestle slogans, often incorporating their food logos and then post their comments on the fan page.  This simple, ‘digital flash mob’ style protest about the destruction of the rainforest and deaths of orangutans should have been a bread and butter corporate PR hush up, but whoever handled the situation got it very wrong.  

Upon reading posts such as the following:

Nestle responded with this statement on their fan page wall:

Cue a social media uproar! They foolishly made the mistake of telling people what not to do.  Whoever was in charge of this obviously did not think thoroughly about what they were saying.  If there is one thing social media users like, it is free speech, challenging it was like provoking an angry lion.  Yet they didn't stop there.  It seems as though the person in charge of their social media thought it was a good idea to wind people up even further.  The following screen grab is perhaps the best example of their ridiculous handling of the situation.

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear oh dear.  Big mistake.  The fallout has seen Nestle been forced to make a public apology, stating: "This (deleting logos) was one in a series of mistakes for which I would like to apologise.  And for being rude.  We've stopped deleting posts, and I have stopped being rude."

We - Grace DR - are not here to pass judgment on the rights and wrongs of the Nestle products, but we did find ourselves incredulous at the naivety they've shown in handling the situation.  The incident is an excellent demonstration of how powerful social media can be as a negative.  It is apparent that companies must understand that with such an open forum and such a public medium they will get negative content, not just positive.  The trick to using social media effectively is accepting that fact and handling it in the correct fashion, something Nestle have clearly failed to understand.