Nestlé, a company which prided itself as the world’s largest food & beverage company, may be gunning towards one of the poorly ran companies in terms of event organisation.
It was a thing of pride for the Nigerian media industry, when the fast moving consumer goods company decided to honour the practitioners in the industry at an event, according to the organisers, aiming to reward professionalism and excellence in reporting and storytelling around Nestlé’s focus areas.
However, reports filtering in after the event was done and dusted on Saturday, December 3, 2022 may not be rewarding to either the Nestlé brand nor the media practitioners the event claimed to honour.
Many of the aggrieved participants, who spoke with Freelanews, complained about poor planning and also questioned the integrity of brand and the awards event.
“Despite the awards event being an annual event, I wonder why a brand as big as Nestlé chose the day of the event to purchase and acquire prizes meant for the winners at an event which was supposed to start by 10am!” a source, who craved anonymity, complained.
According to another source, the first sign of trouble reared its ugly head when the organisers first announced that prizes would be sent to winners after the event.
“We were first told winners would have their prizes delivered to them after the event and I was like, ‘What is this?!’.”
As if that was not enough.
“In the letter sent to us before the event, we were informed that there would be three winners in each category of the awards with the first getting a Samsung Tablet, Nestlé branded Notepad with pen and a recognition plaque.
“The first runner-up was promised a Samsung Tablet, Nestlé branded Notepad with pen and a recognition plaque, while the second runner-up would smile home with a high grade Samsung phone, Nestlé branded Notepad with pen and a recognition plaque,” he revealed.
The source claimed that this reward system was unfortunately dumped in the bin and practitioners were subjected to nothing short of a poorly planned event.
“What we saw was that the winners were given tablets, while based on some explanations, the first runners-up got higher grade Samsung phone than the second runner-up. There was a lot of confusion at the event,” he continued.
“And as for the promised plaques, the second runners-up were given none. Journalists were taken for granted at that event!” he exclaimed.
Another source alleged that when someone in the company’s media communication unit was challenged regarding the poor organisation that marred the event, he was informed that it was all due to the inflation currently pervading the Nigerian economy.
“When we went to the market, reality shocked us. So what we budgeted for was not what we met,” a company media rep was alleged to have been quoted.
In the letter as seen by our correspondent, all the winners and each of the nominees were also promised a box of Nestlé products and a set of Oriamo free pods.
However, as at the time of filing this report, none of the participants contacted has confirmed receipt of these items.
Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator and a recipient of the D9112 Superstar Icon Award, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.
