"Nestle has been forced to take down an image from its Kit Kat Facebook fan page, after it emerged that it was similar to an icon used to ward off paedophiles.
The picture of the nut brown-coloured bear was used briefly to promote Kit Kat Bars on the Facebook page of the Nestle-owned chocolate bar. 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.
"Drum roll please ... Kit Kat is on Instagram," the company wrote above an Instagram photo of the brown bear at a drum set yesterday, with two Kit Kat chocolate bars in its paws in the place of drumsticks.
Pedo-bear pops up on a forum.
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.”
The so-called “mascot of paedophilia” has become an internet meme and shorthand for 'Stop being creepy about kids.'
Since first emerging on the Japanese online bulletin board 4chan, pranksters have competed to insert the image into inappropriate settings around the internet.
Social media expert Laurel Papworth said Nestle should be thankful they invested little in the Facebook photo and had not funded a multimillion dollar campaign.
“Before social media we would have been laughing at their expense,” she said. “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.
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.”
Mr Applebaum described the current state of social media for companies as “white knuckle stuff.”
“You've got to be able to suck it up because you're entering the consumers' domain.”
There is a history of the Pedobear finding itself 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."
