Being Buff: Marketing the social economy

Stories like this don’t happen everday – but they should, and hopefully will, more often.

Over the weekend Greenpeace Canada posted a video on YouTube critical of food giant Nestle’s use of non-sustainable palm oil in products like its popular KitKat chocolate bar. Greenpeace asserts Palm oil is made on plantations created by razing the Indonesian rain forest – a major source of greenhouse gas reduction and orangutan habitat. The video shows a bored office worker chowing down on a KitKat unaware that what he actually pulls from the wrapper are orangutan fingers – complete with oozing blood.

Nestle quickly had YouTube pull the video for “copyright infringement” but not before it was copied to other sites on the net. You can see the video as part of this Digital Journal ariticle.

In the March 22 episode of the social media podcast, For Immediate Release (FIR #536), hosts Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson reported that the issue spilled over to Nestle’s Facebook page – which had more than 94,00 fans at “press” time. ["Pressing" the Publish button on my blog that is:-)] They said many fans of the page had answered Greenpeace’s call to change their fan pictures to anti-Nestle logos like this:

They also said that Nestle had responded by deleting the pictures and having one of their PR people respond, sometimes rudely, to some of the comments on the page. Nestle then, apparently, reversed its decision, stoppped deleting the logos and had the PR person apologise. A look at the page now suggests the FIR report was right on the money. The logos are there as are all the negative comments. The page is now an ad for how bad Nestle is and Nestle, to their great credit, is letting it all happen. In addition, a March 23, Vancouver Sun story reported that “Nestlé responded to the campaign within hours, announcing it would follow in the footsteps of other companies, such as Unilever and Kraft, by cancelling contracts with [Nestle's Indonesian supplier of palm oil] Sinar Mas. The Switzerland-based company has also committed to using only “certified sustainable palm oil” in its products by 2015.”

It took them a while but Nestle finally got it and learned that real power lies in letting people comment, listening to what they say and changing if you’re in the wrong.

None of this is easy to do, especially for large companies. However, these companies, and the people who run them, didn’t get where they are by doing what’s easy.

Well done Nestle. And well done Greenpeace. I think I’ll go have a KitKat…

If you have a story about progressive groups using social media to spur change or any other thoughts on this post please leave a comment!

Tags: Activism, Facebook, Greenpeace, Nestle, YouTube
Posted in Activism, Facebook, YouTube | 1 Comment »

If you weren’t at one of the rallies in January you probably heard about them. Thousands of people, organized through a Facebook group and Web site, converged on cities across Canada to protest Stephen Harper proroguing Parliament.

The Web site, noprorogue.ca, was started by Colin Carmichael after he realized the Facebook group was different from the many others he was perpetually asked to join.  This one had lots of interaction with people talking about actually hitting the streets.

In his Podcamp Toronto 2010 presentation Colin detailed why he started the site and the WordPress plug-ins he used to manage it.

Enjoy!

ps. Apologies for missing the first part of Colin’s presentation.  I was a busy volunteer at Podcamp T.O. and it took me a while to remember that, in the spirit of podcamp, I could get someone to start my tape recorder for me.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (33.1MB)

Posted in Facebook, Political activism, Websites | No Comments »

Just read a Globe and Mail article titled “M&S retreats over bra brouhaha” about how the British company Marks & Spencer reversed its decision to charge more for oversized bras after more than 14,000 women joined a Facebook group to protest the “tit tax”. Busts 4 Justice now has more than 17,000 members and a message saying:

We are really happy to say that, thanks to the members of Busts 4 Justice, M&S have decided to abolish the tit-tax, and from now on will be operating a one-price-fits-all policy across their ranges.
We would like to thank everyone who has supported us on this issue; especially the thousands of brilliant, busty women that have joined forces with us. We couldn’t have done this without you.
Busts 4 Justice remain committed to making things better for busty women on the high street, but for now we’re happy just to be able to encourage all ladies to reward themselves and their boobs with some properly fitted, fairly priced lingerie.
Much love, Becky and Beckie a.k.a. Busts 4 Justice x"

Marks & Spencer ran full page ads in British newspapers, May 9, apologizing for the pricing and saying it was immediately reversing its policy. The ads featured a picture of large breasts with the caption, “We boobed.”

M&S’s response is to be modeled because they listened and publicly admitted they messed up and were changing the policy – using ads that were funny without being mocking. By these actions they may have turned 14,000 angry women back into 14,000 existing – or new M&S customers. 

Posted in Activism, Facebook | No Comments »

So the latest polls indicate that Barack Obama will cruise to victory in the Nov. 4th U.S. election as his lead over McCain is too great for the old guy to overcome. (see the Globe and Mail article on this)

Now, there’s been a lot of talk about how successful Obama’s online campaign has been compared to McCain’s but it wasn’t until I came across a great post on the LivingPlanet blog that it became clear just how much more.

The post compares the two campaigns’ Web 2.0 stats and the contrasts are startling. Here are some of the ones that jumped out at me:

* Google: Googling Obama gets you 79 million page results compared to McCain’s 18.9 million.

* Facebook: Obama has nearly 4x more Facebook supporters at 2.24M compared to McCain’s 595,167.

* YouTube: Obama has 571,000 videos viewed 85,082,123 times compared to McCain’s 176,000 videos with 22,598,936 views.

* Blogs: Obama leads McCain 4,624 to 3,928 in blog mentions as measured by Technorati.

This last one gave me pause….Less than 5000 posts from millions of blogs on the most important election ever? And that compared with 85 million video views…What does that say? 

Well, one thing it suggests is the ever increasing power and reach of video and the question it raises is: what are you and your organization doing about it?

Posted in Blogs, Facebook, Video, social networks | No Comments »

On Tuesday CTV.ca published a story called Online campaigns leave candidates ‘vulnerable’ that argued that getting on social networking sites like Facebook “can quickly backfire on candidates.” To support their point they cited all the negative posts NDP leader Jack Layton got on his Facebook page in response to his original opposition to Green Party Leader Elizabeth May’s participation in televised election debates. They quoted one post from a Montrealer on Layton’s public message board known as the "wall" that said, "You just lost my vote, you undemocratic shill. I can’t believe you’d try to block a serious political party from the debates."

But CTV has it backwards because this is actually an excellent example of exactly why politicians and others should always consider engaging in social media – if it fits their larger communications strategy.

That’s because it’s what happened after the negative posts that’s the most relevant: Jack Layton listened to what people said, good and bad, and reversed his position. Facebook gave him a place to make listening easy and very high profile – and his Facebook page remains the most popular of the leaders.

And, who knows, maybe he got that Montrealer’s vote back…

Posted in Election, Facebook | No Comments »

Well, the short answer is no, but they might as well because they can use it almost any way they want.

I did my first social media client pitch this week and one of the things I recommended was that the company start a Facebook group. And then I got a great question from the marketing director: doesn’t Facebook own everything posted on it and, if so, won’t they own our logo if we post it? I didn’t know the answer so, of course, tapped my social media network for answer and got a great one from Andy Kaplan-Myrth who was flipped my question by Mark Blevis of the Canadian Podcast Buffet. Andy is an Ottawa-based lawyer and manager of the Law and Technology Program at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa. Andy’s informed response can be found in his post.

It never ceases to amaze me how social media makes almost every information problem solvable in five minutes.

Mmm…think I’ll go Twitter the question: how do I make a million dollars by tomorrow night?

Posted in Copyright, Facebook, Trademark, social networks | No Comments »