Yesterday afternoon I turned off the computer and put away the phone, and spent time doing housework with Smallest, while the children played away from their screens in their bedroom.
It was a peaceful afternoon. I needed the downtime – sometimes it can all get a bit too much in the virtual world, and I have to try to remember the point of being at home. Not that I think that the point is housework, but you know what I mean.
While I was offline, a little bubble burst as someone spotted a Nestle badge on the tots100 site. Various ppl were hugely less than impressed, and conversations quickly took place about withdrawing from the tots as ppl didn’t want to be associated with Nestle.
Two points here. I was surprised that there are still ppl around who haven’t heard of the Nestle boycott, and don’t know the reasons behind it. The long story short – Nestle aggressively market baby milk to mothers in the third world who don’t have safe access to clean water. They don’t comply with advertising standards or WHO guidelines.
The second point – this wasn’t a paid advert. This was a badge put on after Nestle made a donation to charity to support two mummy bloggers running the London Marathon.
Now, I tend to start with the view that this is just another way for Nestle to attempt to whitewash their reputation, a bit like the FairTrade kitkat labelling, when only 1% of their cocoa is actually fairtrade. But I struggled with the idea of pulling out of tots instantly – I hope that my inclusion in the ranking gives continual exposure to home education among the more mainstream mummy blogs. That’s important to me – but so is my attitude to boycotting Nestle, and promoting mindful consumerism.
In the end, I didn’t have to make a difficult decision – as soon as the tots organisers joined the discussion they pulled the badge, and what’s more, matched the original donation out of their own pocket. You can’t act fairer or quicker than that, and I was impressed by their responsiveness to their community.
But, it left me thinking. So many companies are now giving to charity/sponsoring events/donating stuff. Is this all just cheap PR for them? Are we being suckers? I’ve clicked on many a link to send a tweet, like a fb page because 10p or 50p or whatever gets donated to charity – I think the latest is Dettol, who are donating 20p to Save the Children for every like on their fb page. And in this particular buzz Nestle got talked about for free, as they didn’t even end up having to give out the donation. Is there no such thing as bad publicity, or did they lose out by it?
I wouldn’t go to a Nestle event, though I know various bloggers have. Ppl were wondering what the difference is – I mean, we still talk to the bloggers who attended after all. But in that instance they weren’t representing us, and we don’t promote them – whereas there’s a prominent tots badge in my sidebar, and I didn’t want to be promoting Nestle even secondhand.
And what about the bloggers who have been sponsored/supported by Nestle to run the marathon? Money is money when it arrives at the charity – but who is benefiting from the publicity? I have every admiration for Emma and Mirka who are putting themselves through a hard painful time of it. (And yes, I’m aware that I’ve just linked to two pages that mention Nestle, but it’s a part of the overall discussion!) ETA Oops, I missed off Mami from Mummy’s Busy World. So sorry! Does my admiration take a knock when I (belatedly) discover that Nestle is behind the campaign? It does, a little. But if they hadn’t taken that support, would any charity be getting anything? It’s very hard to get a place on the marathon at all, let alone the training and preparation you need to go through to do it – is it worth a little publicity for Nestle for that?
Perhaps it is if it launches a discussion around what is charity and what isn’t, if it causes more ppl to be aware of what is going on around us, if it opens ppl’s eyes to the seedier side of PR and marketing. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it all. Would you run a marathon for Nestle?
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