Marketing in the news -- What is going on with Nestle?

    The article I chose for this blog post is, “ Nestle Draws Heat for Stance on Russia– and Other Marketing Losers (and winners) of the Week”, this article was published on March 18th, 2022. This article was written by Adrianne Pasquarelli and E.J. Schultz. There are a few reasons I am interested in this article. The first reason is that I am interested in how the war in Russia has been affecting the U.S., the second reason is that I love chocolate milk, which is a main product that is produced by Nestle, and the third reason is that it also talks about positive things that were going on in marketing that week. This article talks about a few new product launches from Budweiser and Guinness. It talks about how Budweiser is launching a new beer made with honey malt and Guinness is actually making its own Baileys-infused, alcohol-free cream cheese. Another big takeaway from this article is about Nestle and their ties to Russia, given the title of the article. Essentially, Nestle is refusing to cut its ties with their business in Russia despite their invasion of Ukraine. They generate $1.8 billion in sales from Russia which is a lot of money. The value proposition for Nestle is to improve the quality of life and contribute to healthy living and a healthier future. The marketing relevance pertaining to this specific article has to do with a few different companies. As I had mentioned before the article talks about a few new product launches from Budweiser and Guinness, but what the article focuses on the most is Nestle. People, especially in the United States, are refusing to buy products from Nestle due to their continuous sales in Russia. I know many people who don’t like to use or view certain things due to their values and things they have done. For example, some people I know refuse to watch anything with Will Smith or work with him due to what he did at the grammy award ceremony, therefore he gets less views and makes less money because of his choices. The company wants to solve this issue, but they get a lot of their sales from Russia which puts them in a difficult position. They have stopped distributing certain products to Russia, but have not fully committed and still sell things there such as baby food and pet food. I am sure Nestle has many competitor companies because the products they distribute are pretty popular and completely stopping the distribution of their product to Russia might make this competition a bit more intense. The article does not talk much about Nestle's competition in general, but I could see how the things that the article is talking about could affect this aspect. This marketing strategy is unique because they are saying they slowed the distribution of their products to Russia, which is supposed to make people more inclined to buy their products and support the company, but they have completely stopped distributing all products to Russia. This makes Nestle seem a bit unclear about where they stand and makes me question whether the little effort they have given is really going to encourage people to buy their products. I personally think that this is a bad marketing approach. Although I understand that the company is in a difficult position given their large amount of sales in Russia, I think that if they fully commit to no longer distributing any products to Russia they will gain a lot of respect as a company from customers in many different countries and their sales will ultimately increase. For example, it's like a company saying they’re kind of cruelty free, but occasionally they aren’t because it makes them more money. If I were Nestle's brand/marketing manager I would completely cut ties with Russia, not only to increase the sales in other countries, but also to kind of use their voice as a company to show that what Russia is doing is wrong. I learned many things from this article. I feel the most important thing I learned from this article is how much Russia's invasion of Ukraine has impacted things, things you wouldn’t even think of if you aren’t directly associated with these things. Another thing I learned is that Budweiser is coming out with a new type of beer and Guinness is making a Baileys-infused cream cheese, who would’ve known!

The link to the article:https://adage.com/article/marketing-news-strategy/marketing-trends-march-18-2022/2407071