Introduction

This is “What Just Happened?,” the podcast that looks at the biggest brand crises of our time, what they meant for organisational strategy and behaviour, and their lasting impact on our approach to crisis communication.

I’m Kate Hartley. And I’m Tamara Littleton. And together, we’ll delve into what happened, why it mattered, and whether it could happen again.

Episode 

Tamara Littleton: We’re going to talk today about an issue that started more than 14 years ago but still has real relevance today, and in fact, has never really been resolved. I remember this one so well. This is the story of Nestlé versus Greenpeace and the issue of palm oil and deforestation. It was part of a really effective campaign by Greenpeace to raise awareness of the issue of palm oil in food and to get brands to take responsibility for their supply chains, which in many cases were destroying areas of rainforest in order to produce palm oil.

Kate Hartley: So, I’m really interested to get into this one because, for me, it really marked the beginning of Greenpeace’s campaign against the palm oil industry. And probably, I think, the point where ordinary people started to be really aware of how palm oil is connected to deforestation.

TL: Before we get into it, Kate, let’s start by looking very briefly at what the problem is with palm oil, and then we’ll get into the Greenpeace and Nestlé crisis.

KH: Now, obviously, I’m not a palm oil expert, although I may go on a bit of a rant here, but the issue basically is that palm oil is in absolutely everything. From chocolate bars and crisps to shampoo and lipstick, it’s in everything because it’s really cheap, easy to farm, and very versatile. You can use it in all sorts of different ways, which is why all the big consumer goods companies and food manufacturers use it.

The palm trees that produce palm oil, very briefly, are mostly in Indonesia and Malaysia, and they have huge areas of rainforest. Greenpeace says that between 1990 and 2015, an area of rainforest the size of the UK has been destroyed, mostly due to palm oil production. Another issue is that a lot of the natural rainforest in those areas grows on really rich peat soil, which stores carbon. To grow oil palm trees, you need dry land, so people are draining the peat, releasing the carbon. Obviously, that’s really bad for the environment, but it also increases the likelihood of fires because the peat is more flammable when dry.

TL: Okay, so let’s go back to the issue with Nestlé and Greenpeace. When Greenpeace launched a campaign against the use of palm oil in 2010, can you just tell us what happened?

KH: So in March 2010, Greenpeace released a video that was a spoof of the really famous Kit Kat “Have a break. Have a Kit Kat” ads.

TL: Oh yeah, I remember those. It would basically be someone taking a break, and then something amazing would happen while they were having that break. There was one where a photographer was trying to take a picture of a pair of pandas, and as soon as he turned away to have a Kit Kat, they appeared on roller skates. It was that one, wasn’t it?

KH: Yeah, God, I remember that one as well. And the tagline itself, “Have a break. Have a Kit Kat,” is really iconic. It’s been associated with Kit Kat since the 1950s and is still used today. The Greenpeace video built on that, showing an office worker shredding piles of paper, another destroyer of forests. He takes a break for a Kit Kat, and when he opens the bar, he breaks off a finger of Kit Kat, which is actually the finger of an orangutan. Blood from the orangutan finger drips onto his keyboard, and the video pans to an orangutan clinging to a single tree about to be cut down.

It’s a really emotive thing, and that video went absolutely everywhere. It was really clever of Greenpeace because you can talk about stats and figures relating to climate change, and people might ignore them. But you show an orangutan to somebody, which are incredible animals and very relatable to humans, and it becomes powerful.

TL: I remember that video being absolutely everywhere. It was all over international media and sparked a huge backlash on social media. It led to protests, and this is where I believe some errors were made in terms of their communication on social media. They went down the legal route first, didn’t they?

KH: Yeah, and I think that was really where they made their first real error. They asked Greenpeace to take down the video from YouTube for copyright reasons. Now, I think we’ve learned a lot in the intervening period about why that wouldn’t work. But instead of fixing the problem, they tried to hide the video, and we know that’s never going to work. We always used to talk about the social media Hydra. If you cut something down from one place, it just pops up somewhere else. And of course, that’s exactly what happened.

It fueled the fury. Greenpeace just posted the video on Vimeo and promoted it on Twitter (now X), and others shared it widely. Nestlé learned their lesson from that but also faced protesters at their shareholder meeting, dressed as orangutans, dropping a banner saying, “Nestlé, give the orangutans a break.” So, they did realise their error and didn’t ask for it to be taken down again. They left it up at that point.

TL: This part is critical, and I remember it so well because you and I were working in the same office together, watching it unfold in real-time. I vividly remember discussing Nestlé’s official response on Facebook in absolute disbelief, watching it all happen. To let people know, their Facebook page got swamped with new followers joining in the backlash, posting comments about the video. The community manager was removing loads of comments, citing copyright and altered logos. But as time went on, their tone became increasingly agitated and sarcastic.

Commenters started calling them out for being pompous and censoring the community. You could see that the style of communication changed. There was no empathy. I can only assume they were under a lot of pressure, and you and I speculated they were probably on their own and stressed. This crisis was actually a major trigger for us starting Porpeo to allow people to rehearse safely rather than having a public meltdown during a crisis.

KH: Yeah, absolutely it was. We wanted people to be able to fail safely, to practise their response without doing it for real the first time. We see this all the time when running exercises. People do get increasingly agitated, especially after hours. It’s hard. When you’ve had people shouting at you for hours, you lose the plot and start to fight back. You can really see how it happens. I feel for the people on the front line of this. But ultimately, this was about Nestlé’s behaviour, and their communications on social media made it worse. Those social media people wouldn’t have had to deal with that had the behaviour been different in the first place. They could have avoided all of that.

TL: That’s a really good point. Let’s go back to the main issue that started this crisis. It wasn’t necessarily producing the palm oil. We’ve talked about the issue with supply chains in our episode on the horse meat scandal. If you’re Greenpeace and you want to get an industry to change, you have to go after the brand rather than the producer. So, what do we know about the company actually producing the palm oil?

KH: It was a company called Sinar Mas, and a year before this video came out from Greenpeace, they released a report saying Sinar Mas was clearing rainforest illegally without government permits. That was something they obviously denied at the time, but some companies involved with Sinar Mas like Unilever and Kraft cancelled their contracts quickly. Nestlé said it would investigate.

Once the campaign against them started, they said they found a new supplier, but that supplier was still sourcing palm oil from Sinar Mas. So, Nestlé was really just distancing themselves a step away from Sinar Mas. Then they said they would do a full supply chain review by the end of April 2010 and committed to using only certified sustainable palm oil by 2015. Very clear dates from Nestlé on those commitments.

TL: Did they stick to those commitments?

KH: Well, Tamara, in a word, no. Nestlé did stop working with Sinar Mas, and in April 2010, they said 77% of their products were deforestation-free. Nestlé got an external body, the Forest Trust, to help them engage with Greenpeace and audit Nestlé’s suppliers. But in 2018, Nestlé was suspended from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) for failing to report on its use of sustainable palm oil for two years in a row. Having said it would report back and hit these targets, it failed to report those targets. It was quickly reinstated after submitting an action plan, but that plan was to achieve certified sustainable palm oil by 2023, not 2015 as originally promised.

In 2018, its report said 64% of its palm oil was responsibly sourced, but back in 2010, it said 77% of its products were deforestation-free. The phrasing is slightly different, but there are some real variables here. In 2023, Nestlé reported that 100% of its crude palm oil was from certified sources, but only 54% of its kernel oil was from certified sustainable sources. They blamed market shortages, which might be true, but it looks like a pattern. Their behaviour hasn’t matched what they said they would do. We always talk about this being at the crux of good crisis communications.

You can’t just say things and not do them. It has to be based on action. If you don’t fix the fundamental problem, you’ll never be out of the firing line. Greenpeace hasn’t given up. In 2019, they released another report saying Nestlé was still sourcing palm oil from producers implicated in forest fires in Indonesia. Nestlé again said they were deeply concerned and would immediately stop sourcing from suppliers linked to deforestation. But this is starting to sound like a pattern, a trend of not doing what they say they will.

TL: So, I’m thinking I probably know the answer to this, but could this happen again?

KH: Yes, it could. It still is happening. Greenpeace is still raising awareness about the problems with palm oil. Brands are saying all their palm oil is sustainable, but Greenpeace says that might not be the case. Even if something is certified sustainable, there are still problems with it. This comes back to things being buried in the supply chain. We’ve talked about that in the horsemeat scandal. Nestlé says on its website that it’s continually improving its supply chain and uses various technology tools to do that, like satellite mapping to track fires.

But as an ordinary consumer, the minute you see a sustainability badge on a product, you tend to think, “Okay, brilliant. I don’t have to think about this anymore.” But we do. We have to keep asking questions. In May 2024, there were protests in Jakarta from indigenous activists calling for their land and forests to be protected from palm oil plantations. This is still a big problem. It’s not going away. No amount of certification will change that. It needs behavioural change. This could happen in other industries too. Greenpeace is now taking aim at the soy industry, which has similar problems.

TL: And what’s the impact on Nestlé’s reputation long-term and on other businesses?

KH: I’d love to see some really good research on this, but my feeling is that Nestlé has always had problems with boycotts. It’s been boycotted by various groups since the 1970s because of the way it marketed baby milk, and that’s something that still dogs the company today. There are still people who won’t buy Nestlé because of that. I suspect that makes it a target for other issues as well. If you don’t fix a problem early on, it’s just going to keep hounding you forever, and that includes fixing your supply chain.

Every brand is now responsible not just for its own actions but for the actions of its suppliers as well. No matter how far down the chain they are, they will still impact your brand reputation. The next crisis may not come from within your company but from your supplier’s supplier’s supplier. The threat landscape is much wider than we think. It’s the actions brands take to fix the problem that show what that brand is made of.

TL: And I think it did actually make people sit up and listen and take social media more seriously as well.

KH: I totally agree.

Break

KH: I am really excited to have with us today John Brown, who is a communications and brand consultant. He’s worked for many years with brands that want to be a force for good, helping them to tell a better story. He’s a B Corp ambassador and was recently appointed CEO of the Cornwall Chamber of Commerce. John, welcome.

John Brown: Thank you very much for having me. Hello.

KH: I want to start by asking a big question: What can other businesses learn from how Nestlé responded to this deforestation issue and what they’re doing now?

JB: I think one of the things businesses should take away from this is to get to grips with the subjects they’re talking about before embarking on initiatives and programs. One situation we find organisations getting into more frequently is that they breathlessly spend time portraying a purposeful, committed identity, probably most notably since the Paris Climate Agreement. They put forward important branding initiatives but quickly realise they don’t know what they’re talking about and haven’t done the due diligence to understand what sits behind the organisation.

Whether it’s Nestlé or other organisations, what we’ll find over the next 12 to 24 months are businesses that have made extraordinary commitments, portrayed themselves in a particular way, but haven’t done the hard work and due diligence. They’ll either backtrack, reevaluate, or be found out.

KH: Do you think, and I’m sure Nestlé isn’t the only one to do this, that when they get caught out, they then put in place a kind of spurious date, like we see with getting to net zero? These dates seem a long time in the future because they think they’ll have time to work it out. Then, as they get closer, they realize they can’t do it, so they keep setting these dates back. Is that what’s happening?

JB: That’s exactly what’s happening. It’s easy for CMOs or CEOs to set those dates because they’ll either be dead or retired by then. There’s very little accountability. I don’t actually have too much of a problem with long-term dates being set for adjustments to be made. Organisations like Nestlé are enormous, and it takes time to assess and evaluate their entire supply chain. We, as more activist communicators, love pointing the finger and saying how terrible they are, but none of us would remotely understand the complexity they need to unpick.

The problem is that once you start portraying a sense of immediate perfection, you’ll be judged by it. I would have preferred organisations a decade ago to say, “Yes, it’s going to be 2030, 2040, or 2050. We have no idea where we stand right now, but we are on a path to progress. We’re not looking for perfection, but we’re making necessary adjustments and movements. We’ll be transparent and open throughout the journey.”

KH: See, I totally believe you when you say that. It’s human language, understandable, believable.

JB: Yes, and it’s strange because we forget to be human in our communication. If I portray a sense of perfection to someone in a pub, they’ll quickly think I’m an asshole. There’s no difference. It’s a human interaction. We either feel it becomes inaccessible, or we genuinely look for reasons to dislike that individual.

TL: It’s that tall poppy syndrome, isn’t it?

JB: Exactly. We have that phrase, “kill your idols,” because we feel inferior and look for something awful about them. Why brands insist on putting themselves in that position is baffling. If you look at brands that do it well, like Patagonia or Hiut Denim, they communicate their journey towards what they think the future might look like. Their customer loyalty is extraordinary because they’re transparent and humble. They don’t claim to be the best. They take people on their journey, admitting they might go wrong, but they’re honest about it.

KH: Thinking about Nestlé’s response 10 years ago, what do you think of it?

JB: It shows what happens when there’s a distinct lack of humanity in communication.

KH: And maybe there’s no action behind it. This stuff requires doing something, rather than just setting dates and forgetting about it until it’s too late. If they’re not doing enough, they can’t communicate effectively because they’re constantly covering up instead of communicating what they are doing.

JB: They didn’t pause to appreciate the size of the issue. I understand the need for rapid response, but Nestlé has a history of saying the good stuff and addressing the bad stuff when it’s found out. They should start by disclosing the bad stuff, saying they’re sorry, and committing to change.

KH: That leads to an important question: what makes brands do the right thing from the start? Does it always need an organisation like Greenpeace to hold a brand to account, or are there brands that will just be honest and transparent?

JB: Interestingly, Nespresso does it. Nespresso is B Corp certified and had to do a full disclosure, highlighting all the areas they were getting wrong. They spent two and a half years filling out disclosures. Despite the backlash, they disclosed as much as possible. In 18 months, they’ll need to recertify, and failing to do so would be brand suicide. Full disclosure levels the playing field, allowing meaningful debates at parity. Brands need to be transparent and honest about their challenges and progress.

KH: And if you have a dodgy reputation to start with, are you less likely to be believed when something hits the fan? The answer is yes because you’re not being transparent and open. If you admitted to mistakes, people would believe you.

JB: Exactly. We’ve known for a long time that Nestlé isn’t a pleasant organisation. They should spend more time on full disclosures, understanding they’re not getting everything right, but being proactive in communicating that.

TL: Brands like Oatly have leaned into transparency, with sections on their website addressing criticisms with humour and facts.

JB: Innocent Drinks is another example. Their acquisition by Coca-Cola caused backlash, but they’ve maintained transparency. The biggest challenge is dealing with growth. Nestlé is providing things people want, but we need to reassess what growth looks like. No company, whether Nestlé or Patagonia, has a degrowth strategy. We need to rethink success, as we’ve outstripped our planetary boundaries. This requires systemic changes and honest discussions about consumption and sustainability.

Outro

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