Should Greenpeace Give KitKat a Break?

In more recent news, Greenpeace released a rather controversial video on YouTube attacking Nestlé. It involved KitKat bars and an orangutan finger. Messy stuff. YouTube eventually pulled the video in response to Nestlé's complaints. However, this attempt at damage control had a rather adverse reaction. Banning the video served to only result in the users posting of more copies onto YouTube.


Managing the digital presence of a brand online is a tricky prospect. In this case, Nestlé is forced to deal with what I'll refer to as negative evangelists--people who dislike your brand so much that they actively try to damage its reputation. In this instance, getting Greenpeace's video banned was a knee-jerk response and to a portion of the online audience it revealed that Nestlé did have something it wanted to hide. For Greenpeace, they got more publicity out of getting their video taken down, mission accomplished.

How does a company deal with a situation like this? They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. I think in this instance it's important that Nestlé remember they need to maintain a sense of accountability and transparency with their online audience, and they broke both those rules when they got the video banned.

Given the gruesome PETA-like content of the video, Nestlé would have been well justified directly responding to the attack. Don't ban the technology, use it for damage control. If Nestlé had kept a clear head, they could have posted their own video response to the ad acknowledging some of their shortcomings but reframing Nestlé as taking an overexaggerated stance on the issue. Nestlé could then show audiences what is being done to preserve the forest habitats and redirect them to the relevant page or microsite with further details on conservation efforts. Doing this would have helped them to establish accountability and transparency with viewers. Greenpeace might response in turn with further attacks on Nestlé, in turn Nestlé could defend itself and fire back some criticisms of it's own.

What would be the result? It would turn into a online conversation showing people that Nestlé is engaged with its consumers and that it's not just some faceless corporate giant. Companies can't stand around with their head in the sand blocking things out. It's Web 2.0, it's all about engagement.