On Wednesday 14th September 2011 Topman, purveyor of tasteful high street fashions, found itself enveloped in the bane of the modern era for PRs…Twitter rage.
It began innocently enough on Tuesday 13th with Sian Blake asking simply ‘Would anyone like to join me in complaining to Topman about this tshirt?’ Apparently, Twitter did want to join her. By the next day, @TopmanUK were being hit by 140 character venom from all directions. Sian’s tweet started it, but the amplification came from Andy Field as he marvelled at Topman’s ability to ‘be both grossly offensive and [language!] stupid in one slogan.’ That hit of snark earned Andy over 100 retweets and propelled the term ‘Topman’ into the UK’s trending topics on Twitter. The impact didn’t end there. It ended with Topman being forced to pull two t-shirts from their online store.
We could go on about the offensive, inappropriate, ridiculously misogynistic content of the shirts in question, or how it perpetuates the objectification of women in cotton form, but that falls slightly outside of our remit. We’re based in Shoreditch; we’ve seen stranger things done in the name of fashion. No… we are all about the social media.
Between 1pm and 4.30pm, a search for the term “@TopmanUK” brought back over 1500 tweets. That’s 428 an hour. That’s 7.14 tweets per minute. That’s a lot of mentions for a Social Media Manager to sort through, but on the plus side… it did lead to an increased Klout score!
The bit.ly aggregate link of the “breed” t-shirt managed to get itself 14,073 click-throughs by 4.30pm. What would be interesting to know is how many people who clicked through actually bought the shirt. The ROI on the increased pageviews must be terrible, though we should never underestimate the power of “limited edition”, especially once Topman announced they would pull the shirt.
To their credit, Topman saw a social media storm brewing and decided to tackle it in kind, countering Twitter rage with a Facebook statement. Their social media team took action by inaction, never replying to any criticism or being sucked into the s**tstorm brewing on their monitors. A wise strategy; when the Twitterati has the bit between their teeth, any reply becomes fuel to the fire. They then broke from their scheduled programming of Westfield Stratford launch-related content and tweeted the Facebook statement twice… but really only once.
The first tweet (bottom) links directly to the statement, where a concerned individual might read the statement and (hopefully) be appeased. The latest tweet (top) links straight to this:
A “Like Wall”! Yes, raging Twitterati, press ‘Like’ for the brand you’ve been attacking all afternoon! Of course, the statement can be found from here without hitting ‘Like’, but it’s tucked away on the Wall, accessible by a tiny icon on the sidebar. Rather than being taken straight to the apology the Twittering masses demanded, they were confronted with a call to action so inappropriate even the moody model (who bares more than a passing resemblance to a gritty reboot of Little Red Riding Hood) dares not look them in the eye. Not the best move.
Luckily for Topman, this furore is likely a storm in a teacup; odds are that the self-righteous Twitter masses don’t overlap much with their loyal audience. This whole sordid affair probably won’t affect sales much… but it is a black eye for the wider public opinion of the brand.
by David Shawcross
