Ferrero backs off bid to quash ‘World Nutella Day’
The fan-created annual tribute has garnered 40,000 Facebook ‘likes,’ but the maker of Nutella took legal action to stop it. Then it reversed itself. Did the company turn great publicity into irreversible damage?
It seems Ferrero, the Italian company that makes Nutella, wasn’t a big booster of the event, and last week attorneys from the company sent Rosso a cease-and-desist order.
Rosso didn’t post the text of the order, but upon receiving the notice on May 16 she did post a now-deleted message stating that she would be shutting down the World Nutella Day website and all its associated social media presences by May 25.
“The cease-and-desist letter was a bit of a surprise and a disappointment, as over the years I’ve had contact and positive experiences with several employees of Ferrero, SpA., and with their public relations and brand strategy consultants, and I’ve always tried to collaborate and work together in the spirit and goodwill of a fan-run celebration of a spread I (to this day) still eat,” she wrote.
World Nutella Day fans on Facebook were less diplomatic in their statements about the company.
“They’re crazy,” one commenter wrote. “Do they not know good publicity when they see it? Well — clearly not. Idiots.”
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