The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty - Pearson

Company case 2 Nestlé: singled out again and againDuring the first few months, the mother’s milk willalways be the most natural nutriment, and everymother able to do so, should herself suckle herchildren.Henri Nestlé, 1869Nothing is a substitute for or equivalent or superior tobreastmilk.Nestlé warning, 2007The corporate affairs department at Nestlé UK’s headquarterswere bracing themselves for another burst ofadverse publicity. At the forthcoming General Synodof the Church of England a motion would call for acontinued ban on Nescafé by the Church. They alsowanted the Church Commissioners to disinvest their£1.1m (€1.6m) in Nestlé. The Church’s much publicisedboycott of Nescafé first occurred, amid much ridicule,in 1991, as a protest against the use of breast milksubstitutes in Third World countries. In the aftermath ofthe 1991 vote, Nescafé claimed that its sales increased,although many churchgoers said they stopped usingthe brand-leading coffee. The new protest would beone of many the company had faced from Baby FoodAction (BFA) protesters over decades although, accordingto Nestlé, the protesters’ complaints had no foundation.Nestlé SA, whose headquarters are in Vevey,Switzerland, is the world’s largest food company, withannual sales of CHF 98.5bn (€60bn) and with a net profitof CHF 9bn (€5.4bn). It employs around 260,000 people infactories or operations in almost every country in theworld. Henri Nestlé invented manufactured baby food ‘tosave a child’s life’ and the company have been suppliersever since. Then, in the late 1970s and early 1980s,Nestlé came under heavy fire from activists who chargedthe company with encouraging Third World mothers togive up breast feeding and use a company-preparedformula. In 1974 the British charity War on Wantpublished a pamphlet, The Baby Killer, that criticisedUnigate and Nestlé’s ill-advised marketing efforts inAfrica. While War on Want criticised the entire infantformula industry, the German-based Third World ActionGroup issued a ‘translation’ of the original pamphletretitled Nestlé Kills Babies, which singled out thecompany for ‘unethical and immoral behaviour’. Thepamphlets generated much publicity. Enraged atthe protest, Nestlé sued the activists for defamation.The two-year case kept media attention on the issue.‘We won the legal case, but it was a public-relationsdisaster’, commented a Nestlé executive.In 1977, two American social-interest groups, theInterfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility and theInfant Formula Action Coalition (INFACT), spearheadeda worldwide boycott against Nestlé. The campaigncontinued despite the fact that many organisationsrejected the boycott. The US United Methodist Churchconcluded that the activists were guilty of ‘substantialand sometimes gross misrepresentation’, of ‘inflammatoryrhetoric’, and of using ‘wildly exaggeratedfigures’. The boycott was called off in 1984when the activists accepted that thecompany was complying with an infantformula marketing code adopted by theWorld Health Organization (WHO). Sincethen, church, university, local governmentand other action groups periodicallyrediscover the controversy and createpublicity by calling for a boycott.The main accusation now is thatNestlé’s use of promotions persuaded hundreds of thousandsof poverty-stricken, poorly educated mothers thatformula feeding was better for their children. ‘Every day4,000 babies die from unsafe bottle feeding’, explainBMA. They continue, ‘Donations of infant formula can domore harm than good.’ Their concern is the donation offree or low-cost supplies of infant formula to maternitywards and hospitals in developing countries. Formulafeeding is usually an unwise practice in such countriesbecause of poor living conditions and habits; peoplecannot or do not clean bottles properly and often mixformula with impure water. Income level does not permitmany families to buy sufficient quantities of formula. Theprotesters hit out at industry practices generally butkeep Nestlé as their prime target:●‘Every day 4,000babies die fromunsafe bottlefeeding’, explainBMA.Promotional baby booklets ignoring or de-emphasisingbreast feeding.121