...or why community conflict resolution is important?
In March 2010, Greenpeace launched an online PR war against Nestlé. The green organization aimed to draw attention to the fact that the palm oil used in KitKat chocolate is fatal for Indonesian rainforests and the endangered orangutans living in them.
Nature and animal protection advocates around the world have long been voicing that the excessive destruction of orangutan habitats seriously threatens the species' survival. Nevertheless, the ever-increasing demand for palm oil from giant corporations in developed countries continues to be met by the destruction of vast forest areas and peatlands by Southeast Asian producers.
Greenpeace hits home: KitKat vs. Killer
In the green organization's attack campaign, it transformed the logo of Nestlé's popular chocolate from KitKat to „Killer” (Killer).
„Tell Nestlé to leave the rainforests alone!”
With this rallying cry, it encouraged everyone to write letters, comments, blogs, and even call Nestlé demanding an explanation.
The most effective element of the campaign was the shocking parody advertisement in which a bleeding, severed finger of an orangutan emerges from the KitKat package instead of chocolate. Of course, Greenpeace uploaded the video not only to its own website but also to the largest video-sharing site, but Nestlé almost immediately demanded its removal, citing copyright infringement.
YouTube agreed, the video was taken down, which triggered a massive avalanche, and thanks to popular social media, the story reached millions of people around the world within a few days.
Greenpeace then uploaded the short film to another popular video-sharing site, Vimeo, where it generated nearly eighty thousand views within the first few hours and is still available today. Then they made it available again on YouTube.
The Power of Social Media: PR disaster in a few hours
From the masses of various internet social sites and blogs, any form of censorship quickly provoked outrage, so Greenpeace had no particular difficulty rallying the angry virtual crowd to its side. The first and most important attack surface was the official Nestlé fan page on Facebook, which is operated by the company itself. The page's traffic skyrocketed within a few days, as new visitors signed up to truly „call out” Nestlé.
As a solution to the problem, Nestlé did terminate its contract with the palm oil supplier and published this information on its Facebook page, but it made a huge mistake. It restricted social platforms: first, it had the aforementioned advertisement removed from YouTube, then it tried to censor users' messages on Facebook.
The scandal also reached business blogs and the printed press, while the underlying problem had already been resolved long before. By the end of April 2010, Google showed 546,000 results for the Nestlé + Greenpeace combination, and numerous anti-Nestlé Facebook pages appeared with considerable fan numbers...
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