Social Media Warfare: Greenpeace vs. Nestle

While Barack Obama’s election campaign has emphasised the promises of professional Social Media for advertising, the March 17, 2010 should become the birthday of Social Media Warfare. Greenpeace’s traditional media strategy commonly aimed to damage the reputation of companies and to create public pressure so that their targets were forced to react if they want to avoid bigger financial impacts of a potential boycott of their products. Greenpeace usually created this pressure through physical actions aimed to generate lots of media attention, such as their attacks on Shell’s oil platform Brent Spa, or the sea fights between whale hunters and Greenpeace’s ship “Rainbow Warrior”.

In March 2010, Greenpeace has opened a new battlefield for PR attacks by its “Killer” online campaign against Nestle. Their social media tactics included a microsite, a viral video, an email campaign, social networks and even the use of Google AdWords! They showcased how powerful integrated social media campaigns can be while Nestle behaviour on the other side gives an impression what can go wrong if a company doesn’t manage Social Media professionally.

I’ll try to summarise what has happened during the last weeks in 3 major points:

On March 17, 2010 Greenpeace launched a microsite accusing the international multi Nestle to buy palm oil for its popular chocolate bar Kit Kat from a supplier that ruthlessly clears vast areas of Indonesian rainforest for their plantations and therefore destroys the natural habitat of the endangered orang-utan.

1. Greenpeace’s Tactics

This website contained a modified Kit Kat logo (“Killer”), a call to action (“Ask Nestle to give rainforests a break”) and e-cards with a call to boycott nestle products this Easter. A cuddly and cute orangutan became the main face of the campaign and Greenpeace posted a cruel but clever viral video on You Tube. The campaign kick off was backed by their 440,000 fans on Facebook and 37,000 Twitter followers. Moreover Greenpeace even used Google ads to promote the campaign which resulted in ads like “Have a break! Which chocolate company destroys rainforest for palm oil?” for a range of search terms like “Nestle” or “Greenpeace”. Greenpeace activists also “promoted” the campaign through their creative protests at Nestle headquarters in Indonesia and Switzerland.

2. Nestle’s Reaction and the Consequences

As a reaction to this attack Nestle successfully pushed YouTube to banish the clip from its platform, Greenpeace put the Video on Vimeo  and provided a free download from their website. Other internet users posted it on You Tube again and started sharing it through their social networks. Nestle’s short term success turned out to have massive consequences for the brand.

The web community’s fear of censorship worked as a catalyst for the eco-movement. As a consequence the campaign moved away from blogs and video platforms and reached Nestle’s social media accounts. Within hours the number of Nestle’s Facebook fans increased dramatically, unfortunately their wall filled up with negative buzz. Some of the 90,000 fans even used the “Killer” logo as avatars or Facebook profile pics. Nestle’s Facebook “team” seemed to be widely unprepared for this situation and reacted rudely. Their threat to delete posts that include the modified logo and loose moderator comments like: “Thanks for the lesson in manners. Consider yourself embraced…” fired the topic up and more people joined the anti-Nestle movement and created their own anti-Nestle Fan Pages.

Mainstream media instantly picked up the issue and Twitter and private blogs were buzzing. The single search term “Greenpeace vs Nestle” now leads to 10.900 results on Google Blog search and nearly 80,000 web results in total.

It is not clear yet which financial impact the campaign finally had or if Nestle will draw consequences out of the public pressure. Nevertheless, Greenpeace showcased how to effectively spread word of mouth through Social Media usage.

3. What does that mean for the future?

Companies should prepare for similar activities as the Greenpeace success might have opened up some new perspectives for other interest groups and environmental organisations. I agree with Oliver Blanchard in that believing Social Media abstinence would solve the problem is like thinking “Nobody can see me if I shut my eyes”.  The platforms are there; communication will happen with or without you! Companies have to prepare and understand that their Social Media account should be managed by professionals. Moreover joining the conversation is a chance to manage a PR Crisis successfully which will be topic of another article.

For further reading I strongly recommend the brilliant discussions by Scott Douglas and Olliver Blanchard. Nestle’s official statement to that topic can be found under their FAQ section.

Image by Greenpeace New Zealand

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