#NoNestlé

Everyone is familiar with Nestlé, the Swiss multi-national company. It is one of the biggest food companies in the world.  Unfortunately, whoever is in charge of their social media really caused turmoil within the company. In just a matter of minutes, this individual turned Nestlé’s social media into a nightmare. Nestlé’s logo had been changed through consumers, and these consumers were making it their profile picture and posting it on their Facebook, sharing Nestlé’s logo worldwide through social media. Yes, this was not the original logo, but it was something a fan had created for Nestle to show they liked and appreciated the brand. Whoever is in charge of the Facebook page had posted that anyone with this version of the logo would be deleted from their page and all comments with anyone who had the picture, as their profile picture, would also be deleted. People felt extremely violated and that freedom of expression was being taken away from them through Nestlé.  They viewed the company with disrespect, and took this as a threat. Nestlé not only offended many people by this but when fans reached out with how upset they were, Nestlé responded with very disrespectful comments, as you can see below, from examples taken from the Facebook page.

The person who was running the Facebook page was very impolite, sarcastic and hostile to the very people who make the company successful.  A reformed company logo being shared and posted over Facebook should be taken as a compliment because it shows people have time to do gestures for the company and share and promote the company for others to see.

I believe that this was very insulting to customers and was not the right way of dealing with the situation. This is a very poor example of social networking.  After this, #nonestle was trending on Twitter and fans were unliking and unfollowing Nestle very rapidly. 

Every company can learn from this mistake and should only reply with proper and respectful comments to their fans. Even though Nestlé apologized and made it clear they were being unreasonable, people will not forget what happened.  Nestlé lost many loyal customers and fans from this mistake. 

Not only were consumers lost, people were outraged and it evolved into a much bigger problem for Nestlé. Greenpeace supporters an activist group, changed their profile picture to the anti- Nestlé slogan and started posting on the Nestlé page saying things like "I like some Nestlé products so I qualify as a 'fan.' I would like Nestlé to make them even better by removing palm oil. I would like to enjoy my Kit-Kats without feeling responsible for rainforest destruction and orangutan deaths." 

At this point Nestlé’s Facebook page was a disaster and the comments made by supporters were masked. A video by Greenpeace went viral showing how Nestlé is ruining rain forests and destroying many animals’ lives, such as the orangutan. You can watch the video at this link: http://vimeo.com/10236827

From such a small comment, the companies Facebook page spiraled out of control, and started a phenomenon that did not even begin on the topic of ruining the rain forests.  Nestlé has apologized but the company is still recovering and will be for some time. This is a huge lesson to learn for other companies, social media can blow up and create a mess within seconds. This is why we need to watch what we say and post on social media.