The PR Files #2: Fashion Blogger Mishaps
The PR Files is an ongoing series of musings on PR excellency and failure. The PR Files are often fashion focused, but from time to time expect me to go out on a limb. You can view the rest of the series here.
When I heard about the debacle between Simple shoes and a group of fashion bloggers, I had to write about it. The tale is one so ridiculous, and an example of how the blogging community can be so completely misunderstood.
In November, Michelle from Kingdom of Style posted ‘A Simple Tale’ on her blog, telling the story of Michelle and Marie’s confusing experience with Simple shoes. Simple had offered to send the girls some shoes, presumably for review, but they found themselves pulled into something far more complicated.
I recommend reading the full post here, but the gist is that Simple sent the girls one of the shoes they thought they were getting, and another completely random shoe that belonged to someone else. Simple’s idea was that the girls could Tweet about the missing shoes, find one another, and meet up to have coffee and exchange shoes.
The Problems
- The girls don’t Tweet, and had zero interest in starting.
- Geographical limitations prevented them from taking part, should they have been interested.
It’s an example of a marketing initiative that, while cool and creative at first, is executed poorly due to a lack of understanding of its target.
The girls, most importantly, wanted it to be simple. When they were offered the shoes, they weren’t signing up to be involved in such a stunt.
Here’s how we expected it to play out: Simple send shoes, Queen Marie takes photos of herself wearing shoes frolicking in the woods, Queen Marie posts about shoes and you read post. Simple, right?
Not everyone has time to fluff around for free stuff, and in the realm of product reviews simple is almost always better.
It is so important for companies to know who they are dealing with, and surely a little research would have shown relevant locations and who was using Twitter. Perhaps a shoe-swapping tweet up would have been feasible in an area with a high tweeting-blogger population, although I might recommend asking for those who would like to be involved first.
What do you think? How would you react if you were sent a pair of mismatched shoes to your current location?
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