Another Case of Bad Digital Marketing

This story really impressed me because of the way it shows the relevance of digital media in our world and also how companies should be really careful about this.

This all happened a little while ago with a famous shoe store in Brazil, Arezzo. This company has over 300 stores all through Brazil, mostly through franchises and it is considered very fashion and reasonably upscale.

The brand launched its new winter collection on a Friday with special events on some of its flagship stores in the main cities in Brazil. One of the main features of the new collection was a set of products made with real fur. The collection had boots’ interiors, scarfs and other products made with real fur from foxes and rabbits. The company launched this new collection making sure to advertise that the products were made with real fur most likely to show how fashion and upscale the brand was.

Unfortunately for the brand, it was a disaster. A few hours after the new products were launched the fuss began on the Internet.

The company was present on the Internet not only with their own website but they also had a Twitter account and a Facebook page.

Consumers, critics, animal lovers or not, began attacking the company both on Twitter and on Facebook. The #Arezzo was one of the top trends on Twitter Brazil already on Friday evening and it stayed there most of the weekend. All posts severely criticized the new collection, the brand and the designers, many using very offensive words.

The same happened on the company’s Facebook page. Tons of posts with harsh comments, all in the company’s own page. Hundreds of people actually became “fans” of the brand on Facebook just to be able to insult the company in its own “territory”.

But the worst part is that it all happened on a weekend. And apparently there was nobody working on the company. The crisis lasted the entire weekend without a single comment from the company. Only on Monday afternoon the company issued a statement, first in the social networks. Arezzo apologized and announced that it would remove all real fur products from all of its stores even though the origin of the products was certified.

One can only imagine the financial impact of this crisis.

Link to one of the newspapers articles about this crisis (only in Portuguese): http://www.estadao.com.br/noticias/impresso,apos-criticas-arezzo-retira-pecas-com-pele-verdadeira-das-lojas,708156,0.htm