A few months ago I gave a presentation at Cal-State – Long Beach to a group of students on social media marketing. In my presentations, I always try to give real world examples of what companies are currently doing in the world of social media. Given that I am constantly attending social media events and trainings to stay on top of the latest development, it really bothers me to hear about an amazing use of social media with year old examples. It must be current to be relevant.

The week of my presentation, Nestle’s social media blunder hit the blogosphere so I used it as a teaching moment. If you are not familiar with their experience, they made a statement on their Facebook account stating that they intended to protect their intellectual property of their logo and intended to have altered versions of their logo removed from people’s profile pics on Facebook. As you can imagine this created a huge backlash within the online community. Within hours, people were lashing out all over the internet with all kinds of negative sentiments towards Nestle.

Then it went from bad to worse, Greenpeace seized the opportunity to attack Nestle’s use of palm oil and how its use affects the habitats of orangutans using this video (caution: it is quite gory) .  Today, Nestle bowed to Greenpeace’s demands and  announced a “zero deforestation” policy in partnership with The Forest Trust (TFT).  This partnership will initially focus on amending its palm oil purchasing practices.

Regardless of which side of this argument you side with.  It is hard to ignore the power of social media.  I have often said that it is fundamentally changing the marketing relationship into a two way communication.  Companies can no longer only tell consumers what to think about their brand, they must listen and listen well.