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.
Tweet, Blog, Riot!
You may have noticed over the past week a certain tension in the air. Also, a lot of smoke. The Feral Youth™ of Broken Britain© that Daily Mail columnists are always going on about took to the streets and wreaked havoc in their hoodies, you may have noticed. If not, you’re following the wrong people on Twitter. Also, it was Twitter’s fault…or BlackBerry’s fault…or Facebook’s fault. Probably not LinkedIn’s fault though. Also, it was rap music’s fault. Anyway, it was SOMEONE’s fault! After all, how else can we explain complex socio-economic factors? We can’t. It’s the computers fault.
Whichever scapegoat the media and politicians finally land on, one thing is for sure; the riots will have some interesting consequences for the relationship between the law and social media.
Social Media-led Arrests
For one thing, arrests have already been made for using Facebook and Twitter to incite the riots. Three people have been arrested in Southampton. In Scotland, three teenagers have been arrested for attempting to incite riots in Dundee city centre on Facebook. A spokesman from the Tayside Police stated that:
“The posting of such comments, whether or not the intention is to encourage disturbances, can cause alarm and distress to the communities in which we live and encourage others to behave in a violent or disorderly manner.”
That may sound familiar to you; we’ve basically resurrected the Twitter Joke Trial. The widely mocked and decried precedent set there was that a threatening message in a public forum, such as Twitter, is indeed a serious matter.
Here We Go Again
Earlier today The Prime Minister, David Cameron, came out with this gem in an address to parliament:
“Mr Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organised via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”
He’s notably lacking in the details but if this particular decree is in any way similar to the Digital Economy Act of 2010 it will probably run straight into difficulties, both on human rights grounds and logistical ones.
Let’s talk about the practicality of banning people from using social media. A recent poll conducted by Opinium Research found that 38% of people support shutting down social media channels during civil unrest. The poll did not reveal what percentage of that 38% actually considered the logistics of doing such a thing. One, not very good, solution would be to enact a temporary blocking of social media domains, somewhat like the proxy that the Internet Watch Foundation already holds over the UK to reduce file-sharing of illicit material. Proxies can be breached pretty easily, as we saw in Egypt earlier this year. Maybe block those people who do incite unrest on social media from the internet? Tried that sort of thing already with the Digital Economy Act and that’s now stuck in what is sure to be a long judicial review. It wouldn’t work anyway, there are far too many ways to get around an individual ban. For instance, Starbucks. Another would be to shut off the Internet completely. And that wouldn’t go down very well at all, even with the 38% of people who wouldn’t mind losing Facebook for an evening.
Even if details of the rioters were supplied to social media site owners to be blacklisted, they could find new Wi-Fi connections and make up new details. Twitter, especially is extremely easy to falsify details on – you don’t even need to verify the email you use! BlackBerry Messenger? They’re called Pay as You Go phones. Even if you crack all of these problems, other forums and social media services you’ve never even considered will surely pop up. In some quarters these accounts and devices are called ‘throwaways,’ and social media profiles can quite easily become disposable and interchangeable; just look at the recent LulzSec and Anonymous sagas.
So… how exactly are you to ban people from social media, Mr Prime Minister?
by David Shawcross