Case study:
Top Luxury Fashion Brand

Averting a brand crisis when minutes matter

As one of the world’s top 50 most valuable brands*, our Italian luxury fashion client has been recognized on multiple occasions for its innovative and unconventional marketing.

However, in recent years a number of high-profile luxury fashion brands have found themselves at the center of controversy, especially on social media.

This includes accusations of cultural appropriations, questions about sustainability efforts, ethical fashion, counterfeits and misinterpreted marketing campaigns.

These conversations made our client more susceptible to online abuse, consumer backlash, activist boycotts and instigators intent on doing damage to its market value and business operations.

Something had to be done to anticipate these unknown incidents and issues to make sure they didn’t become a full-blown crisis.

Source: 2020 Interbrand Index

In recent years a number of high-profile luxury fashion brands have found themselves at the center of controversy, especially on social media.

Challenges

While our client recognized these risks were becoming more frequent, the brand still relied on traditional social monitoring tools. These dashboards used internally identified keyword searches to track historically well-known topics of concern, such as established animal rights activists. However, they didn’t detect unknown risks to the brand, nor did they effectively triage the myriad of potential incidents and issues that were growing in volume as the industry began to see its consumers engage in social movements across the wider web.

Unfortunately, these were not the only challenges they encountered. Others included:

Cultural nuances

The luxury fashion conversation occurred in many different languages, and what mattered to consumers in one culture wasn’t necessarily cause for alarm with another. Having this intelligence was critical to making informed decisions as a brand.

Global coverage

To complicate matters further, these conversations spanned many different time zones outside of Italy where the brand was headquartered, so its existing solution was not able to deliver 24/7/365 coverage across the globe in real time.

False alarms

When internally designated keywords were identified by the traditional solution it set off a flurry of emails within the organization, which meant that genuine incidents or issues could go unnoticed amid the fire hose of alerts.

Solution

Crisp mobilized its suite of Defense and Intelligence Solutions to provide our client with real-time 24/7/365 monitoring and intelligent reporting on the people, groups and organizations that posed a risk to their brand, ensuring they were first to know about issues and incidents that had the potential to explode into a crisis.

Then, it happened.

At 3:17 p.m. est. (which was 10:17 p.m. in Italy) on a Tuesday last spring, an instigator was detected. A consumer with 341 followers posted an incendiary tweet about a new fashion design from our client, misinterpreting it as being “racist.” The tweet was detected and evaluated by Crisp at 3:18 p.m. and promptly escalated to brand leadership at 3:22 p.m. The brand was able to respond in a timely manner, taking the necessary steps to address the situation and prevent it from becoming a full-blown crisis.

Crisis Defense

Monitored and delivered intelligent reporting on the people, groups and organizations that posed a risk to our luxury fashion brand client 24/7/365 across multiple countries.

Owned Social Defense

Protected our client, and its consumers, by removing harmful content, and identifying and countering the bad actors who created it on their owned social media pages 24/7/365.

Paid Social Defense

Ensured our client’s investment in paid social media advertising was not compromised by individuals attempts to post harmful content or negative opinions about their brand.

Ever since, our client has been able to mitigate similar brand risks, as well as security risks, surfacing online. In fact, during the first half of 2020, Crisp reviewed over seven million pieces of content on our client’s social media pages, hid or removed over 59,000 items on their owned and paid social media pages across 17 countries, and escalated five incidents or issues created by influencers or instigators for immediate attention. This not only has helped to protect the brand’s reputation and market value, it also has provided C-level peace of mind.

Crisp Solutions:

Crisp Products:

7 million pieces of content on client channels reviewed in H1 2020

59,000 harmful content items hidden or removed in H1 2020

17 countries’ social media pages defended on behalf of the brand

5 business critical incidents or issues escalated in H1 2020

1 potentially damaging item escalated within 4 minutes

The highest standard in Brand Communications defense and intelligence

At Crisp, we guarantee you’ll always be first to know and act. Join the hundreds of other enterprises who trust us to protect their combined $4.5 trillion in market capitalization with early-warning risk intelligence. Find out why Crisp is the highest standard in Brand Communications Defense and Intelligence today.

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