Good write-up of the Nestle v Greenpeace story in Communicate magazine, which underlines some critical points for any corporate handling a social media-driven issue:
- Blocking or deleting content you don’t like is invariably counter-productive, no matter what the lawyers say … people will still find the content & it makes you look even more devious
- The tone you adopt in discussing issues is critical … don’t get angry or irritable, no matter how much you are provoked
As the lady from Greenpeace said: ”They’ve made it so easy for us”
This simply underlines the challenges faced by most corporates. The marketers and corporate comms people at Nestle aren’t stupid – they are simply hamstrung by the constraints imposed by their legal advisors and facing new communications challenges for which their training & experience has left them ill-prepared.
At the moment, all of the advantages lie with the antagonists – they know how to get the ‘mob’ on their side by playing the freedom of expression card & can invariably rely on a corporate over-reaction to keep the blogosphere in a state of mild hysteria.