Nestle's Facebook Crunch

Well, I'm a day late (actually a few days late) and a dollar short (or whatever a candy bar costs these days) but I guess there was recently a huge hubbub regarding Nestle's fan page on Facebook. It has been covered in hundreds of articles and commentaries, and I'll link to a few that I found worthwhile.

Long story short, Nestle had a fan page (still does). As Caroline McCarthy on CNET does a good job of recapping, the environmental group, Greenpeace, has been trying to get Nestle to stop using palm oil because it supposedly wreaks all sorts of havoc on the planet and endangered species. Greenpeace supporters started posting comments to Nestle's fan page, accompanied by having changed their own profile pictures to derisive modifications of Nestle product logos. Nestle threatened to pull the comments--considered a Facebook faux pas--of anyone using a modified logo, and the back and forth got nasty as the Thought Gadgets blog recounts.

According to an opinion offered by Blake Bowyer of EyeTraffic Media, "Nestlé didn’t recognize three inalienable consumer rights of a new media era:

1) Freedom of speech
2) Freedom of assembly
3) The right to petition

Having read over the pieces linked here and some others, I agree that whoever from Nestle was replying to the comments didn't do it very tactfully, and in coming off rather snarkily, poured gasoline on the fire. I am also respectful of environmental concerns, and aware that some multinational conglomerates may put the almighty dollar ahead of the common good and set themselves up for activist harangues (or worse), but I don't know enough about the specifics to really take sides on the original issue.

While I believe that Web 2.0 is a good thing, in giving everyone a voice, we all know that "haters" express their opinions much more vociferously than those who like a certain product, company, person, etc. So I'm not sure what Nestle was supposed to do in terms of handing the situation "correctly." People were violating Nestle trademarks in negative ways, and for reasons that I assume Nestle thinks false. Certainly the PR team could have responded more calmly, but if thousands are posting egregious claims--or what you believe are egregious claims--to your fan page, "falling on the sword" as one comment suggested doesn't quite seem just either.

I'm an advocate of company Fan Pages, as social media is just too prevalent to be ignored, but this episode shows why the business world will never be fully embracing. And why, perhaps it shouldn't.