Monthly Archives: March 2010

Have you heard about what’s going on with Nestle and Greenpeace? Interesting article this morning about it and I don’t exactly know where I come out on this. Maybe you can help!
The folks at Greenpeace have targeted Nestle over the company‘s use of palm oil in the Kit Kat bar because of

Nestlé’s purchases of palm-oil from an Indonesian company that Greenpeace International says has cleared rain forest to establish palm plantations.

Nestlé says it had already decided to stop dealing with the firm, which supplied just 1.25% of the palm oil Nestlé used last year. It says it bought only a tiny fraction of the firm’s output, so any impact was negligible, and that it is working toward buying only environmentally sustainable palm oil.

OK, so how much is too much, right?  Apparently, the Greenpeace folks think any is too much.  But that’s not what intrigues me here.  This is:

The difficulty with social media, says Ms. Backes, is “to show that we are listening, which we obviously are, while not getting involved in a shouting match.”

She’s a Nestle spokesperson and she’s reacting to the fact that Nestle’s Facebook and Twitter outposts are being inundated with protesters.  The company is trying to respond responsibly via social media but is getting shouted down. Of course, your instinct is to take down the bad comments or prevent additional posts but that changes the nature of the conversation, making it a monologue.  On the other hand, if the protesters are totally wrong and are overwhelming Nestle’s ability to correct each incorrect post, what should they do?

I don’t have an answer.  It’s easy when it’s a handful of disgruntled consumers but what if it’s thousand of organized protesters who aren’t letting the facts get in the way of their story?

What would you do in Nestle’s shoes?