
Snookered by Greenpeace
Chocolate maker Nestle is finding itself unable to cope
with a Greenpeace online attack against its use of polar bear unfriendly palm oil.
Greenpeace released a YouTube video which showed someone
tucking into a orang-utan finger instead of a Kit Kat. The video was viewed
750,000 times in a week Greenpeace's beef is that the company's alleged use of
palm oil from deforested areas in Indonesia.
However Nestle's tactics to blunt the campaign have
landed it in the centre of a firestorm on Twitter and Facebook. Nestle ordered YouTube to remove the video citing
copyright infringement. The reason was that Greenpeace had doctored the Kit Kat
logo to read as "Killer". It found its Facebook page was then flooded with negative
posts from 'unfans', so the outfit just unfriended them.
"To repeat: we welcome your comments, but please
don't post using an altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic -
they will be deleted," Nestle's moderator wrote. Now suddenly in the lead up to Easter the outfit is
facing a boycott of its products.
Belinda Fletcher, a Greenpeace campaigner, said Nestle's
own PR made matters much worse for the company and much better for the
environmentalists.