Saturday, March 27, 2010

Branded Food Fights

Cadbury has been causing all sorts of badwill in NZ, from screwing with the size and recipe of its chocolate bars, to offshoring and screwing with the formula for its Creme Eggs, Minties and Wine Gums.

Nestle is learning a similar lesson over in Oz, after the food giant had a Greenpeace ad critical of palm plantations removed from YouTube. Negative comments on Nestle's Facebook page have been deleted, as well as threats not to take the brand's logo in vain:
When Nestle's company Facebook page was flooded with negative posts from 'unfans' the company moved to delete them and any altered logos that appeared on the social networking site.

"To repeat: we welcome your comments, but please don't post using an altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic - they will be deleted," Nestle's moderator wrote. 
Incidentally, one of the free speech tragedies of the Top Secret ACTA treaty will be to make criticism and mockery of these superbrands punishable by disconnection from the internet. Thou shalt not make graven images of brand names. Yeah right.