Bowley Design

Yesterday’s Paperchase incident is a good example of how big brands cannot afford to ignore social media today.

What happened?

If you didn’t hear about it, basically they were accused of plagiarising a young UK artist’s work for a range of products. They apparently ignored her requests to remove the products and she could not afford legal fees to make them do so. So, she took to her blog and Twitter to vent her frustration. The rest you can imagine – it was re-tweeted like crazy, the media picked up on it and a massive anti-Paperchase sentiment was created in no time at all, with once loyal Paperchase customers declaring a boycott or their products.

In my opinion Paperchase’s downfall was that, from what I can gather, they had virtually no social media presence at all before the storm. No Twitter account, no blog on their website, and a Facebook page (if they actually own it – I can’t tell) that hasn’t been updated since last summer.

What should they have done?

Internet fire-storms against brands are here to stay in our social media world – they cannot be banned or prevented, but they can be addressed and possibly contained. If Paperchase had quickly acknowledged and (if legally possible) addressed some of the Twitter criticisms the impact could have been far less. Instead, they eventually created an account yesterday, but then only posted a couple of brief statements and left it at that. No engagement. No response to specific tweets. In today’s world that effectively amounts to a closed door policy, with a whiff of brand arrogance. Of course they have to get the legal facts straight first, but at least acknowledge your critics.

I reminds me of how, before social media, celebrities accused of something would often pull up barriers and close their doors to reporters instead of responding – so the reporters would start speculating and discussing the accusations, creating a media fire-storm that may or may not have been true.

So, I’ll be waiting to see what happens with Paperchase as a result. With the recent loss of all their Borders concessions it can’t be a good time to have this problem. My advice? Nominate someone to start responding to some of the tweets, even if it’s just to acknowledge them before the facts are known. Consider starting a company blog and do more with your Facebook page – these things don’t take that much effort for a big company.

In short – brands must offer to engage their customer base, even if it’s only on a small scale to start with.

What do you think?

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