Fail or Holy Grail? Let's check out Greenpeace

Brands, organizations and foundations use Social Media to spread their ideas, sell their products and get attention. Almost every brand, organization or foundation uses Social Media in one or another way. Every Friday I will write about a brand, organization or foundation and their social media campaign, but is this a fail or a holy grail? This week I will discuss the social media campagin of Greenpeace, they believe they can save the planet with social media. Do you believe it?

Personally I did not know if I do believe that social media can help Greenpeace to save the planet, but there is one example that changed my mind: the social media war between KitKat and Greenpeace.

What was the case? Greenpeace blamed Nestle, maker of KitKat of using palm oil from companies that are thrasing Indonesion rainforests, threatening the livelihoods of local people and pushing orang-utans towards extinction.

To attract the attention of thousands of people, Greenpeace edited a regular commercial of KitKat in which an employee is enjoying his KitKat in his break. They actually replaced the KitKat for the bloody fingers of an orang-utan with on the background the sounds of chainsaws. They uploaded this video on Youtube and that was the moment the hell broke loose and there happened many things in less than no time: Nestle asked Youtube to remove the video. Youtube agreed and Greenpeace started a boycot against Nestle on Facebook and other social mediums and also the Facebookpage of Nestle was bombed with thousends of reactions: why this censure?

The following video was uploaded by Greenpeace...

After reading about this social media campaign, I definitely can say that the campagin of Greenpeace is a holy grail. The way they played the game was great and they got what they want: Greenpeace asked and Nestle has answered. A new policy commits Nestle to identify and exclude companies from its supply chain with high risk plantations or farms linked to deforestation. Saving the planet hand in hand with social media sounds a little bit ambitious to me, but after this whole KitKat issue, who knows what is possible...

Until next time,
Eline Jansen, Mediaholic

Do you have a Bloglovin' account? Follow me also on Bloglovin'!

Gaddafi envoy has talks in London Comets caused Saturn ring ripples Yemen braced for demonstrations German state sued by nuclear firm Italy moves migrants to mainland Argentine torture general jailed India Gandhi book ban 'shameful'