Introduction: Social Media – Boon or Bane?
With the increase in the horizon of Social Media, various organisations and companies have seen how the online communication can improve or shatter their reputation. Crisis Management and PR practices are being tested and various new ways of handling online communications with stakeholders are being tested and created. Though traditional ways of communication and media practices tend to remain useful and more effective than the new ones in social media. Facebook, Youtube and Twitter are the growing social media websites and they provide some growth of the relation between Stakeholder’s communicators and marketers who carefully need to use tact ...view middle of the document...
Reputation is built on the information they receive from the organization and media and get other information (Second-hand information) through word-of-mouth, blogs, Media etc. During a crisis, the damage the company or the organization bears is basically based on the assumption of responsibility of the crisis situation. When the crisis is intentional the company responds not through action but through communication.
Greenpeace, before taking the initiative of the social media campaign, had considered speaking to Nestle to stop the sourcing of PALM OIL from Indonesia who were intentionally destroying the Indonesian Forests, but Nestle kept mum about it.
Greenpeace then used social media, as it would provide more impact in catching Nestle’s attention. Greenpeace used advertisement campaigns, social media campaign and on-the-ground activism with its main target being the Offices and AGMs across Europe particularly UK. They put up a video clip on Youtube showing an office worker biting into a Kitkat containing an Orangutan Finger, which dripped blood onto the computer keyboard. Greenpeace stated that the practices Nestle followed of sourcing from its suppliers who contributed a lot in deforesting a rainforest and the social media platform used was Youtube. The viewer were left in a state of shock when they watched the video online.
Greenpeace caught Nestle’s attention with the video and Nestle asked Youtube to remove the video over copyright infringement. This triggered activists to blog about this scenario and the discussion of boycotting Nestle or anti-nestle landed on nestle’s own Facebook Page. As reported, Greenpeace was then accused by Nestle for encouraging people and advocates to send emails, make calls and to give one Nestle a piece of their mind on Nestle’s facebook page. Nestle’s strategy, of deleting any comments by users whose profile pictures used the modified and infuriating forms of the Nestle Logo, had backfired as the bitter approach instigated more jarring comments by the facebook users.
The attack against Nestle by the environmentally conscious and concerned facebook user’s crowd grew bigger and wider as more users kept joining them. More bloggers started to join them and it was also picked up by online websites for news and media organizations to cover and broadcast the story. Media was closely following this story, and specialist media like treehugger and greenbiz and newspapers like The guardian.
Nestle did not try to control the social media conversations further but instead they adapted a new way to deal with the problem. They suspended the sourcing of palm oil from Sinar Mas (Supplier of Palm oil). Meetings with Greenpeace were organized to provide them with detailed information of its new Palm oil supply chain.
Nestle adopted new ways for long-term sustainability, they appointed a Forest Trust, a non-profit organization which helped the company in liaising with the Greenpeace and certify and audit...
