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July 20, 2012 By Erik Deckers

CelebBoutique Shredded by a Lack of Curiosity and General Awareness

CelebBoutique, the British clothing website, may have committed the foul-up of all foul-ups:

After being hammered for just a few minutes on social media, their social media people turned on the TV, and saw the terrible news from Aurora, Colorado. Then they sent this:

We apologise for our misunderstanding about Aurora. – CB

We didn’t check what the trend was about hence the confusion, again we do apologise.

Followed by this:

We are incredibly sorry for our tweet about Aurora – Our PR is NOT US based and had not checked the reason for the trend, at that time our
—
social media was totally UNAWARE of the situation and simply thought it was another trending topic – we have removed the very insensitive
—
tweet and will of course take more care in future to look into what we say in our tweets. Again we do apologise for any offense caused
—
this was not intentional & will not occur again. Our most sincere apologies for both the tweet and situation. – CB

Meanwhile, most Americans are livid at the insensitivity of what is now being perceived as a vacuous and clueless fashion brand spouting off about clothes, shoes, and celebrities. As a result, CelebBoutique has just taken a major hit to its brand, with several thousand people pounding them like the fist of an angry god.

And it’s not going to go away anytime soon.

I’ll cut them a little slack. Yes, I’m angry, but I also recognize that mistakes do happen. Someone made a terrible mistake, and it’s not worth storming the castle with pitchforks and torches. No one should lose their job for this.

But this was a mistake that could have easily — EASILY! — been prevented.

All you have to do is be curious, and be willing to educate yourself.

Lack of Curiosity Killed CelebBoutique

Their first follow-up tweets are the first indication that curiosity is not something CelebBoutique’s social media staff holds in great quantities.

“We didn’t check what the trend was about.”

How do you not check this? How can you not be the least bit curious that some word is trending? Why was the first thing that popped into your head about you and your dress, and not “gee, I wonder why that word is trending?”

There are tools to tell you what is trending. There are tools to tell you why something is trending. Google, Twitter Search, even hashtags.org are all places to start.

This is where people need to think like journalists. A journalist never reports on a story that he hears from one person. A newspaper reporter doesn’t write a single sentence until she has confirmed everything her sources tell her. And they never, ever fire off a comment without knowing a single thing about what they’re talking about.

I don’t know if CelebBoutique uses an outside PR firm to do their social media, or if they have an internal staff. I don’t know if they have one person in charge of the Twitter account, or if there are several people.

But regardless of who is doing what, you need to act like a journalist. Even for just a minute. Act like a journalist.

Be curious.

Ask questions.

Wonder why something is happening, and don’t just fire off the first thing that comes into your head, like an 8-year-old.

Otherwise, you pull a boneheaded move like this, and all the goodwill you and your company have worked for will be shredded and ground into the dirt.

—
Update: It looks like the National Rifle Association made a similar gaffe. They actually deleted their entire Twitter account.

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Filed Under: Broadcast Media, crisis communication, News, Print Media, Public Relations, Social Media, Traditional Media, Twitter Tagged With: blog writing, citizen journalism, Social Media, traditional media

About Erik Deckers

Erik Deckers is the President of Pro Blog Service, a content marketing and social media marketing agency He co-authored four social media books, including No Bullshit Social Media with Jason Falls (2011, Que Biz-Tech), and Branding Yourself with Kyle Lacy (3rd ed., 2017, Que Biz-Tech), and The Owned Media Doctrine (2013, Archway Publishing). Erik has written a weekly newspaper humor column for 10 papers around Indiana since 1995. He was also the Spring 2016 writer-in-residence at the Jack Kerouac House in Orlando, FL.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Josh says

    July 20, 2012 at 5:04 pm

    I appreciate this part most:

    “No one should lose their job for this.

    But this was a mistake that could have easily — EASILY! — been prevented.”

    You’re absolutely correct that this is a terrible faux pas, and also correct that it can be a learning experience instead of the loss of livelihood for someone. People are so ready to crucify others over mistakes these days, it’s nice to hear calls for education rather than firing.

  2. Brandon Coppernoll says

    July 20, 2012 at 3:49 pm

    I get the mistake to a small degree. They are UK-based; however, they’re operating on a global tool in a global market on a day that happens to have something that is aware globally.

    You’re absolutely right. Check to see why something is trending. Make sure it’s what you want to be affiliated with before you hit send.

    • Erik Deckers says

      July 20, 2012 at 4:06 pm

      And normally their being in another country would be an excuse. But the Aurora shooting has become a world news story, so they had resources to check it out, as well as the tools to see why the term was trending.

      Even when I get a big spike in web traffic on my Google Analytics, I spend several minutes trying to determine why it happened.

  3. Amber Recker says

    July 20, 2012 at 3:49 pm

    Right. On.

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