Greenpeace 1 - 0 Nestlé

Case 7 from our hand out deals with an alternative use of social media.
Most of the companies use theses tools to promote their goods and services and improve their visibility on the web, others use them for a different purpose: denouncing an issue !

Here is an example of Greenpeace who used Facebook and Youtube to denounce Nestlé's non-ecological practices.

Objectives:
- Use social media to denounce an ecological issue
- Have an impact on consumer's mind by creating a buzz
- Improve Nestlé's practices

Target audience:
Greenpeace targeted Nestlé's Facebook fan pages, which means more than 715 691 persons (2012 figures) and people using Youtube. Since 2010, more than 500 000 persons watched this video on Youtube.

Issues: "Nestlé's practices of using palm oil in areas that threatened rainforests and orangutang populations" (Greenpeace press release)

Opportunities: Nestlé is very famous around the world, so denouncing its practices was not so tough for Greenpeace because they knew the impact could be strong.
Using the Kitkat chocolate bar was also very smart from Greenpeace, because a lot of people consumes it and consequently the target audience could feel very concerned by this issue.

Strategy: Becoming a Nestlé's Facebook friend

Tactics: Creating a striking anti-Nestlé adversiting on Youtube and publish it on Nestlé's Facebook fan page.

Measurement : Greenpeace could measure the consequences of its campaign by looking at the number of viewers, the number and the contents of comments on Nestlé's fan page.

The best measurement of Greenpeace's impact is the fact that after this campaign, Nestlé decided to exclude companies from its supply chain that deal with risk plantations and deforestation.

Well done Greenpeace !

This case teaches two points:
1) Social media can be used for marketing and demarketing reasons
2) When you use a social media, you have to be very cautious ! Be prepared to deal with different point of views.

Charlotte Flomet