Nestle’s PR Woes

About a month ago, Nestle found itself the target (note: sort of graphic photo near the bottom of the linked page) of a guerilla campaign. Greenpeace decided to take Nestle to task for buying palm oil from a producer that’s allegedly destroying rain forest habitats.

They made a graphic “Give me a break”-commercial parody with a man unwrapping a Kit-Kat (licensed to Nestle outside of the U.S.), breaking off a primate finger instead of a chocolate one, and biting into it with bloody results. I won’t embed it here because it’s pretty icky, but you can see it at the above link.

Nestle did a rather poor job of reacting to the campaign by having Greenpeace’s video pulled from YouTube, which only garnered Greenpeace more publicity. Nestle’s Facebook page exploded with angry comments.

In the end, Greenpeace sort of won, as Nestle capitulated and committed to using certified sustainable palm oil by 2015. Still, the angry Facebook comments haven’t stopped, so Nestle’s got some more PR work ahead of them.

All that is wonderful news for the planet and its apes, but the candy blogger in me wants to point out – palm oil shouldn’t be in chocolate in the first place! Cocoa butter should be lipid enough, but alas, palm oil is cheaper.