Social media crisis —Versace

During August 2019, many international brands such as Coach, Givenchy, Calvin Klein, Swarovski, Versace…got in trouble with culture problem. They put “Hong Kong”on clothes as independent country but not a place that belongs to china. As a result Millions of Chinese netizens are upset and corporations are groveling.

For the case of Versace:

On 8 August, an image of a T-shirt by Italian fashion house Versace started making the rounds on social media. One Chinese web user wrote: “I discovered this recently, and wondered if the design of this T-shirt means that Versace is supporting Hong Kong independence?”

How did the brand respond to the situation?

In 11 August, Versace quickly reponsed for this problem and announced that they recalled and destroyed the T-shirts with wrong information. They apologized for the mistake and respect for China.

What’s more, Donatella Versace the designer and chief creative officer of Versace posted on Instagram: “Never have I wanted to disrespect China’s National Sovereignty and this is why I wanted to personally apologize for such inaccuracy and for any distress that it may have caused.”

My opinion

During that period chinese consumers got much more angry since it is a very sensitive time, that many yong generation from hongkong are fighting against the erosion of the “one country, two systems” arrangement enshrining some autonomy for Hong Kong when China took it back in 1997. Many violent political upheaval happens that radical protesters trashing and burning shops, bank branches and subway stations… thus making this spelling error and design error to be more serious.

However, this mistake is ridiculous and can be avoided at a very early stage. For a mature international company, it is very important for them to know well about the culture of the country that they are going to expand. Since it is hard for the home company to do this, thus it is necessary for them to set up sub-companies in different places and hiring local professionals. In the place to solve these problems I think it is important for both PR and Marketing department to react in the first place. Pr should react in a very very early age to explain and apologize. Here are several things that we need to paying attention on: make sure to react in a very first place, react internationally and in a proper platform, stop posting schedual posts and slaes and wait after the crisis past.