The Analysis Of Pros & Cons In The Production Of Nestlé Company

The company I’ve chosen to analyse is Nestlé. Nestlé S.A. is the world’s biggest food and beverages manufacturer from Switzerland. Its headquarter is in Vevey, Switzerland. In 1905, Anglo-Swiss Milk Company and Farine Lactée merged into one company creating Nestlé. The company currently owns around 447 factories, branches in almost every country worldwide and providing jobs to around 337,000 people. It’s also one of the main shareholders in L’Oreal, the world’s biggest beauty products manufacturer. The company’s motto “Good food, Good life” reflects on their aim of supplying healthy food that tastes great and is available at all times, efficient and practical.

Henri Nestlé, the founder of Nestlé S.A. believe that the great nutrition is crucial to staying fit. It also shows that food and beverages is fundamental to their company. To communicate internally, the company uses several ways, one of them is crowdsourcing. Even though crowdsourcing is usually a method used in millennial start-ups, Nestlé shows that crowdsourcing may be an effective method. The company has approximately 36,000 employees who are directly involved. To accommodate communication regarding the supply chain such as challenges, issues, ideas, and solutions between supply chain teams worldwide, Nestlé launched "InGenius”, a crowdsourcing tool.

InGenius is depicted as a "safe space" to share ideas for employees, including proposals for potential start-ups. Employees use an internal website to share ideas, where others can give feedbacks and vote. Selected proposals will receive support from the headquarters and the proposer will lead the research and development. Apart from crowdsourcing, Nestlé also has developed more than 70 supply chain-related massive open online courses in multiple languages for their employees to learn. Nestlé has a specific framework, which is their fundamental strategy for its entire digital communications, called the Brand Building the Nestlé Way (BBNW).

The existing brand is portrayed through several tools which will either confirm or add their value further. The first strategy is to identify the customers- their identities and values they hold. Next, the brand image which is created from the comprehension of the customers, will then be incorporated into the corporate’s mission and vision. The customer’s experience regarding the product from their flavour, quality to their packaging is the third tool to of BBNW, followed by new innovations and developments in their product, the understanding of the demands made by customers and finally the high standards in carrying out the course of action.

The company believes in the importance of values in both in their work culture and external communications. According to Cristina Macina,Global Internal Communication and Engagement Strategy Manager, what separates Nestlé from other companies is its strong culture especially on the values. She mentioned that communication in a value-based company where action matters is crucial. The strong value embedded in the company culture is what unites the multinational company with 330,000 employees worldwide. These values gives guidelines and something to refer to for these employees. Furthermore, the company adjusts their advertising strategy to target millennials by emphasizing the usage of social media or other digital platforms. Since the usage of media constantly change, the company is working to provide relevant content by incorporating values held by the generations with the mission and vision of the company and the brand.

Nestlé also emphasizes on the importance of storytelling in its brands’ advertisements based on feedbacks from their consumers, especially the significance in matching both the consumers’ demands and values. One of the most successful advertisement by the company is the one which emphasizes on telling a story to the consumers instead of focusing on only telling what the product is.

Nowadays, a lot of products is advertised by their emotional appeal. Being a big company is not enough, it’s about being a company that is chosen by the buyers as something they incorporate in their daily life. For example Milo’s 2017 campaign regarding mothers returning to school and telling their stories about experiencing their children’s school life. The advertisement picks up on the school life nostalgia for adults and children’s desire for their parents to understand the hardships of going to school which makes the advertisement successful to cater the different age groups. They also show different parents from different backgrounds and language which makes it much more relatable for a larger group of people.Due to engagement with customers through both marketing tools and ensuring the quality of the products, twenty-nine of Nestlé's brands, including Kit-Kat and Nescafé earn over US$1.1 billion from sales yearly. The company also ranked No. 64 on the Fortune Global 500 in 2017and No. 33 on the 2016 edition of the Forbes Global 2000 list of largest public companies.

Although Nestlé is a huge brand with an impressive achievement, there were also some controversies that happened along the years. In 2008, several environmental groups filed a complaint against Nestlé to the Advertising Standards of Canada after Nestlé took out full-page advertisements in October 2008 with claims that bottled water is the best eco-friendly consumer product. They also claimed that most bottles ended up recycled in their ads. Meanwhile in their 2008 Corporate Citizenship Report, Nestlé themselves stated that many of their bottles end up in the solid-waste stream, and that most of their bottles are not recycled. The advertising campaign has been called greenwashing. Nestlé defended its ads, saying they will show they have been truthful in their campaign. The company should’ve taken better measures in handling the controversy. They should’ve apologized and admit to their mistakes, so the consumers doesn’t lose trust in the brand.

Nestlé also promotes unhealthy food by labelling it as healthy. A recent research done by UK Consumers Association 7 out of 15 breakfast cereals with the highest sugar, fat and salt content were produced by Nestlé. Nestlé claims as a leading company that promotes health and wellness is quite ironic, especially because most of cereal products are marketed to children. The company should be truthful and label their products properly so it wouldn’t be misleading especially to children consumers. The false “health” labels could also cause misconception from the parents and may cause nutrition deficiency in children. In conclusion, the various communication strategy by Nestlé has worked quite efficiently in order to attract consumers to use the products. Apart from that, the company should do the recommendations to avoid the risk or loss that might affect the company.