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Nestle Kit Kat Palm Oil Crisis:Greenpeace Uses Facebook, Youtube
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by Sudha Krishna | March 23, 2010 at 11:04 am
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Nestle Kit Kat Palm Oil Crisis - A failure in online reputation management
Nestle can't seem to get a break in the Kit Kat Palm Oil Crisis. It is backtracking from its poorly managed Kit Kat palm oil fiasco after Facebook and Youtube users inundated the chocolate maker with concerns after Greenpeace launched its Have a Break campaign against Nestle's use of palm oil in its products.
First, Nestle tried to get Youtube to take down the Greenpeace Have a Break Kit Kat video. Then on Nestle's Facebook's fan page responses to users comments were not the most thoughtful which made matters worse.
Protesters soon began to fill Nestlé's Facebook fan page with comments -- and many of those protesters changed their personal profile photos to be negatively altered logos, like changing KitKat to Killer and Nestlé to Nosale.
Greepeace launched the Nestle Kit Kat Video campaign because it claims the palm oil used in the chocolate bars is sourced from the Indonesian company Sinar Mas which is not harvesting the palm oil in a sustainable way.
The supplier operates in regions where rainforests and peatlands are being replaced by palm tree plantations that eliminate natural habitat and reduce carbon dioxide sinks that help keep the atmosphere clean and fight global warming.
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After receiving all this unwanted attention from Facebook and Youtube users, Nestle shifted its tactics and came out with a media release which said in part;
Nestlé has pledged to give preference to suppliers who strive to improve the efficiency and sustainability of their operations and use of resources... Nestlé does not use crude palm oil nor has any direct links to the palm oil plantations and continues to work with suppliers to investigate the traceability of all possible sources of any palm oil used
But some social media observers have rendered their verdict Nestle failed in how it managed the Kit Kat Palm Oil crisis.
2015 feels very far away and kinda seems like lip service. However, daily updates on your quest to sustainability would make your efforts seem a bit more real. You had a really great opportunity to rebrand your company one day at a time by creating really great content about sustainability.
I don’t know if you totally missed the boat, but it kinda seems like you did. I’m only one guy, but I used to love eating Kit Kat bars and was going to bring back like £20 of English ones for my friends in New York, but now they’ll have to wait until 2015. Sorry, guys.
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john John (not verified)at 10:09 on May 25th, 2010
Wow. I have worked for Nestle for the past 15 years. Possibly I have fallen for their brainwashing. The ad is thought provoking.