If you are involved in PR and corporate communications it seems that not a week goes by without some ‘poor’ company blundering into the limelight of the social media theatre but for all the wrong reasons.
Without doubt, social media, a great channel for percolating positive buzz, can also be a bit of a wild west - the place where public showdowns are becoming more commonplace and corporate reputations are at stake. In the latest “Nestlé” incident the storm’s brewed because of transparent three-way bun fight between one of the UK’s most successful issues-driven pressure groups, the mighty Greenpeace, the titanic consumer group Nestle, and their respective “ interactions” with consumers on two of the most popular social networking & micro-blogging sites Facebook and Twitter.
But, asks Freestyle Interactive’s PR Delia Goldsby: “What’s to be done about it? And how do companies start to adapt their crisis management & online PR policies now that social media is here to stay?”
Recently under siege from a Twitter storm and Facebook (FB) posting frenzy , the PR’s at Nestlé HQ must have been wrestling with how to ‘manage’ the stream of negative commentary around the company’s alleged “Palm oil” dealings.
“Arrogant”, “naïve”, “WTF” were all FB responses to the way Nestlé’s communications team had being trying to cushion the viral blow from the high impact ‘online attack’ from leading pressure group Greenpeace.
So what happened? It was all sparked by the release of a cheeky Kit Kat social media campaign by Greenpeace which started to make FB & Twitter crackle with negative sentiment about Nestlé. Greenpeace’s communications mission was to bring to public attention the economic & green issues surrounding the global supply & demand of palm oil. To that end their campaign ‘borrowed ’ the iconic imagery of the Nestlé super chocolate brand and used to it to catapult the ‘green’ palm oil issue (and Nestlé’s alleged ‘bad’ involvement in it) straight into the heart of two of the most potent social media platforms – Facebook and Twitter. The ensuing online banter which followed, put Nestlé on the backfoot and low & behold we now have another example of big company misjudging the power of social media communication and not realising the impact on its online reputation.
In Nestlé’s defence you could say they are a sitting duck, a victim even? But realistically they must have seen something like this emerging on the social media channels? It’s not like Nestlé are a stranger to well documented PR and reputation management issues - Nestlé has always faced public and press scrutiny of one sort or another so it’s fair to say they probably have a well honed crisis & risk management communications plan poised ready for action when needed.
So how come Nestlé fluffed up this time?
In my view, the error of judgement made by Nestlé is that they attempted to deal with this crisis as if they were still communicating in the days of analogue communications.
Top down, “cease and desist” style tone of communications just doesn’t work in the world of social media; the old ways of central command PR and reputation protection are dead! Viewed in this way you could say that Nestlé were the architect of their own social media crisis.
Reputation and crisis management in a world of digital communications which is turbo charged by the power of social media, requires a whole shift in PR thinking: it is definitely not business-as-usual in the land of PR.
And that’s why companies, especially those with customers in the thousands and millions, have got to pull their heads out from underneath the pillow, get savvy about social media and rewrite their How-to-handle-a-crisis-manuals – effective online PR, reputation management and bottom lines will depend up on it.
So what could Nestlé be doing?
You’d think that a mighty global empire, maker of hundreds of consumer brands & spending lots on corporate communications and PR must have adapted their crisis communications policies to take account of the reshaped digital communications landscape? But I suspect that what this latest social media skirmish shows, is that they have failed to give enough attention to the online element of their digital communication planning.
It’s evident from their “controlled” posts & the content and tone of their responses, that Nestlé has not quite understood who their audiences are exactly, and how they converse & chat on their Facebook fan page.
And its this lack of genuine cognition about consumers and ‘audiences’ behaviour online, understanding how they converse, recommend, review, interact and engage real time, that really lies at the heart of why Nestlé have failed to handle the situation well.