On November 17th, Dolce & Gabbana (D&G) released its marketing Campaign for its 2019 Spring runway show on Instagram: a 3-episode short videos called “Eating With Chopsticks”. Setting the tone for the runway show on November 22th in Shanghai, D&G aimed to attract more attention on social media like Instagram and Chinese microblog platform Weibo, where it has millions of followers in total. Once D&G released the videos, it soon faced criticism from the public of conducting racism and cultural appropriation. The leak of designer Gabbana’s offensive language in a chatbox also pushed the PR crisis up to the next level. All of these led to the cancellation of the D&G show in Shanghai and pulling-off of D&G products from the major Chinese e-commerce platforms at the end.
Hoping to display some elements of cultural inclusion, this whole idea seems to be a good campaign for the coming runway show. What makes this video so insulting to the public? In the video, an Asian model is using chopsticks to eat Italian dishes with difficulties, “First up today is how to use this stick shaped cutlery to eat great traditional Pizza Margherita.” Then in the next cannoli video, the male narrator asked in mandarin, “Is it too huge for you?” Apart from showing stereotypes and demeaning chopsticks culture, the whole social media crisis was pushed up when a model reveals designer Gabbana’s derogatory comments about China using the 💩 emoji.
D&G used to be very smart utilizing social media. Instead of having professional models, once its runway show featured a large number of cyber celebrities, which attracted a lot of traffic online. This time, the mindless speeches of the designer are more of a social crime coming along with a sense of cultural supremacy. It is one’s freedom to hold onto their belief and express it through artwork, design, or branding, no matter positive or negative towards an issue. Stefano Gabbana has even more freedom than many others due to his power, influence and social status. Freedom of his speech and expressions carries responsibilities to the brand. Many people are tired of Gabbana’s lip service official apologies, from gay couple adoptions to publicly body-shame Selena Gomez. This might be a headache for the PR team, but more irresponsible to the staff at the backstage who worked so hard to make the runway show happen in Shanghai.
Facing a more global customer market, embracing diverse cultural elements is common and very popular in marketing campaigns. Appreciation can also bring appropriation when it comes to the representation of a culture that is different from the one that the brand represents. Often, the history and the power dynamics of different cultures would influence the feelings of the viewers. Understanding the values and culture codes of another culture is crucial before using it.
As for the market in China, considering its customer base, China is a big market for the luxury fashion as the number of middle-class income population rises, and the consumption upgrade of the Millenials / Z-gens. According to McKinsey’s report in 2017, China comprises a third of global luxury sales. However, China’s digital environment can be harsh, with easily incited nationalism and a large number of patriotic warriors behind the screen. Due to historical reasons, “territory” and “sovereignty” are sensitive topics. When it comes to these topics, breaking the culture code, is the freedom of a brand but comes with a price tag. Short-term pain for D&G such as dropping social media followers from 993,933 to 15,892 within two weeks, it caused shrank of Asia-Pacific market from 25% to 22%, and a declining sales until March 2020 as forecasted.
This case of D&G is an attention-worth case for marketing campaign creative directors for the careful use of cultural elements. Targeting a globalized market on open platforms, messages can easily be interpreted in different ways, although sometimes unintended. Respecting a different culture seems to be a basic rule, but in reality, people’s unconscious bias (which is normal and we all have biases) can lead the whole campaign/project into a disaster. Just as the retail and buying editor trend forecaster WGSN, Sandy Chu said, “People are navigating across social media channels and languages, so something that happens in one country can easily be amplified across languages and countries in real-time.”
Diverse leadership in the company would be valuable and necessary, and the voices of the staff of various cultural backgrounds can easily avoid these types of mistakes. Effective internal communications and feedbacks would minimize the negative messages penetrated in marketing campaigns or products. Luca Solca, head of luxury goods at investment company Exane BNP Paribas says, “A multinational, multicultural, diverse leadership organization can perceive and integrate different sensitivities.” If D&G had listened to the viewpoints of several Asian staff and asked their opinion about it, they may have heard about their feelings. Just a change certain language, change the facial expressions and acts of the model, and this video series may turn into a successful campaign.
Reference:
No comments:
Post a Comment