H&M; Fashion Faux Pas and the PR Crisis Blunder
Just as the freezing weather that is gripping the UK presents good PR opportunities for savvy businesses to create the content that will earn them coverage, it also presents a clear and present PR danger to those failing to cope.
Pause for a moment and just think how local authorities are being flayed over their inadequate gritting? Indeed I have quipped on Twitter that if the same investment had been made in planning for the winter weather as has gone into the PR crisis management to deal with the fallout... well, I might be able to get out of my road safely!
However, even where extreme winter weather is the norm, it can present a perilous back drop to a news story, as clothing giant H&M discovered in New York this week, after a store was caught slashing and dumping old stock that could have gone to the homeless in the frozen Big Apple. An initial story in the New York Times soon went global and H&M saw their reputation being shredded on social media.
This is a story of a significant PR failure that saw H&M spectacularly fail to deal with a relatively straightforward problem and consequently it became a much bigger story.
Now, the 24-hour news cycle and inevitable social media onslaught means the best PR specialists are nimble footed and quick to respond, which makes it all the more incredulous that H&M failed to respond to 10 enquiries from the New York Times. Minimising the impact of the story at this stage would have prevented it being covered extensively in other media, merrily tarnishing the brand.
The bitter irony is that when H&M finally responded it was with a measured and reasonable explanation – isolated store, contrary to policy etc etc – which said in response to any one of the 10 calls made by the New York Times, would have really minimised the story.Certainly you wouldn’t have read about it here.
Ironically, there was an even earlier opportunity to kill this story – or at least meant it only appeared in the New York Times. The charity worker who contacted the paper only did so after H&M head office in Sweden ignored them. Foolish eh?
There are times when not commenting – even with the risqué ‘No Comment’ – can be the best strategy, but it is enormously high risk and is a step that should not be taken lightly. And certainly, if you have a major news organisation chasing you, who clearly have sufficient facts to publish... well burying your head in the snow just isn’t going to work.
Photo credit: Thanks to Amy Halverson for providing the image used via Flickr