In the olden days, around the time Pears Soap was first launched, if you wanted to protest you created a placard and marched on the street with your mates. Nowadays, you hit the internet. And today, Unilever has learnt a powerful lesson – never underestimate the power of social media. It has been forced to abandon a new recipe for Pears soap, following a Facebook campaign.

The ‘Bring Back the Original Pears Soap’ campaign was started on the social networking site when customers realised that the familiar scent of the soap was now completely different after its makers tinkered with the 221-year-old recipe, trebling the number of ingredients.

With the new bar overtaking supermarket shelves, social networking stepped in – and Unilever is now planning to launch a bar ‘as close to the original as possible’ from March this year following the complaints.

It just goes to show. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it….unless you’re sure people won’t notice.