Nestle was forced to take down an image of a brown bear used to promote Kit Kat Bars from its Kit Kat Facebook fan page because the bear was similar to an icon used to repel pedophiles.
According to Chris Zappone with theage, the company said it had no idea that the image matched that of “Pedobear”- considered visual shorthand on the internet for sites posting material with inappropriate overtones towards minors.
Pedobear is a cartoon bear who appears when people are writing questionable material about kids on the Internet. Pedobear originated on a site called 4chan, an image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images.
“Pedo” is short for “pedophile”, thus a pedophilic bear. The bear is used to ridicule pedophiles or people who have an unsavory interest in minors.
Nestle Australia & New Zealand confirmed that it had produced the image but denied any knowledge of the paedophile-linked Pedobear.
“We produced this photo ” of a real guy in a bear suit – to launch Instagram through our Facebook community,”a spokeswoman for the company said. “The picture is not Pedobear”
“We had never heard of Pedobear,”she said. “But when the possibility of its similarity to the so-called ‘Pedobear’ was raised with us, we immediately removed it”
Social media expert Laurel Papworth said before social media we would have been laughing at their expense.
“Now companies like Nestle know immediately that things have gone very very wrong and don’t have to invest in big budget ads to find out”
“The problem wasn’t putting a photo up on a social media site – it was faulty branding with poor understanding of symbolism,”she said.
Zappone noted that there is a history of the Pedobear finding its way into advertisements, catching the companies off guard.
“An iPhone app containing the bear was removed from Apple’s online store in 2011 only weeks after its release. In 2010, police in California rushed to issue a warning after a person appeared at an event dressed in the costume.”
Peter Applebaum, managing director digital and social media marketing agency Tick Yes, said companies were only in the early stages of understanding how social media works.
“You can’t look at social media through the lens of corporate standards,”he said. “You’re entering the consumer’s domain”