You are Ines Waldner, chief strategy officer of Helvetia Nutrition, a Swiss food group whose infant-formula line is valued at CHF 1.1 billion. An NGO coalition has just accused the company of breaking, in West Africa, the marketing code you yourself drafted. Before deciding how to respond, your team has to agree on one thing: who it is facing.
The situation
It is the morning of 14 March 2026. The report is called "Formula First, Babies Last", and it is signed by a respected international health NGO, three national consumer groups and an activist network with 1.4 million followers. It claims that Helvetia's sales reps in two West African markets handed out free formula samples and ran "baby clubs" inside health clinics, practices banned both by the WHO code and by the Responsible Marketing Charter Helvetia published two years ago.
Within 72 hours the campaign reaches 22 million impressions, three major European outlets pick it up and a petition demanding a full marketing moratorium gathers 180,000 signatures. Two institutional investors holding 9% of the shares announce a resolution for the shareholders' meeting; a pension fund puts the stock "under review". A European grocery chain, with a contract worth CHF 168 million a year, wants written assurance within 21 days.
The board wants a recommendation in ten days. Your crisis team is split: the commercial side says the practices are legal there and needed to compete; sustainability says the Charter has been broken. Each side reads the coalition its own way.