Wowsers. Greenpeace UK post a video highlighting that Nestle apparently buys palm oil from companies that destroy rainforests. Online people go onto Facebook and Twitter (and the other account) and have a go at the company, the company then responds – too aggresively to some – online via Facebook. Row ensues. Talk of social media disaster, crisis PR and so on…

Here’s the question: does any of this rowing make a difference? Are less people going to buy Nestle now? Also, are they stopping the buy because of the palm oil reason or because of some social media perceived ’slight’?

Here’s the video for those who haven’t seen it:

Now, the video has been on the go for around a week. The Globe & Mail points out that where this all generated steam was when Nestle got the video pulled from the web, which was silly. To be fair, Nestle put out a statement on the whole thing, so you would think that the box was ticked, crisis avoided, job done. Greenpeace got some publicity, Nestle showed it had taken steps to counter the negative facts, everyone comes out well.

Nope.

Greenpeace kept putting the video out there – fair enough, that’s what campaigners do – and then people started jumping onto the official Facebook and Twitter pages. Where it got hairy was in the responses on Facebook. Instead of being diplomatic, some of the replies were rude, causing more upset which then kept going.

(This is quite a concise version of what’s happened, but it pretty much sums it up).

Lessons to be learned by Nestle and Greenpeace and others

1) Nestle blew it the first time, asking for the video to come down. What they should have done was brought out a video of their own and placed that everywhere the Greenpeace one was. They’ve relied on one statement and that clearly hasn’t been enough.

2) Not responding to every single tweet/FB post is perfectly fair and valid. At the top of each of their social media pages is their position which makes it easy for people to see. However, they may have lost some ground by not constantly going back to people and saying “look, we’ve already said we’re working to cut out palm oil coming from bad places”. Vodafone got a lot of praise for responding to nearly every tweet sent to them after the hassles they had a few months ago.

2b) The more I think about it, Nestle really should counter ever tweet and post. I wonder how many looked at the statement and thought TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) (scroll down here for my thoughts on tl;dr)

3) People on social media love talking about themselves so much so that they can actually dwarf the original message (see the Ikea campaign of last year where more people spoke about the social media work than the actual store opening). As many people are now talking about the rudeness as the Greenpeace campaign (though are normally mentioning both at the same time). In old school terms, Nestle’s rudeness gave the story legs to keep going.

4) Manners do count. This bit is kinda important.

5) Trying to censor something in this day and age is old-school and probably doomed to failure if people reveal you’ve tried to delete something.

6) This stuff always seems to kick off on a Friday.

7) Why is no-one giving YouTube a kicking for the censorship? Parent company: Google. Google motto: Do No Evil.

What Nestle could/should have done

1) When the video came out, organised a meeting with Greenpeace to hear all their points

2) Reveal their position, work with Greenpeace on a joint statement

3) Let Greenpeace spread their version, you spread yours. After all, Nestle have good blogger relationships, they should have used that.

4) Point out that you are trying to make things better, but these things take time. In the meantime all suggestions welcome.

As it is, the only winners from this piece of mischief are Greenpeace. After all, had Nestle already stopped using the oil from that area?

But will people stop buying Nestle goods? That will be the real question in the long-term…

(This row’s timing was almost supernatural as it developed as Social Penguin was writing Dealing with Negativity in Social Media)