Okay, so I know I blab about this a lot, but the reason I do is because I have so many clients who mistake social media as a bunch of teenagers texting each other all day. So not true.
Over the weekend I stumbled across a few posts that let me in on something I apparently missed on Twitter the last few days. So here’s what happened, and all of this happened purely via social networks:
It looks like on May 25th was when the originally tweet by the Etsy (Stevie of tru . che)artist went out:
@imakeshinylove stevie
Hey @UrbanOutfitters, this is NOT COOL. Way to rip me off. http://bit.ly/mU8GHh vs. http://truche.etsy.com — Please RT!
and then it went on to Facebook where a few people shared the story. Because I know you’re wondering, here is Stevie’s necklace:
and here is Urban Outfitters:
Now, I want to pause here a moment to say that the point of this article is not whether hippies were making those necklaces in the 70′s (as a bunch of commenters across the web said) or whether the design was Stevie’s to claim, etc. The point of this article is what social media can do to bolster your business or damage your business, depending on which side of the equation you’re on.
So it goes up on a Tumblr post, a few Facebook walls, and Twitter, and the outrage of the handmade and Etsy community is such that it becomes a trending topic on Twitter (which is not easy to do!). I’m borrowing much of this from the fantastic post that Amber Karnes did, “The Anatomy of a Trending Topic,” because she played quite an active role in the whole story. Her tweets were retweeted hundreds of times and the whole thing became a trending topic in the US, UK, and Canada.
Now it’s viral. The Huffington Post picked it up, Business Insider picked it up, and who knows who else.
Finally Urban Outfitters was forced to respond, saying “We see the tweets about the I Heart Destination necklace. Our accessories team is looking into it.” And not only that, but the item became “unavailable” on their site and is now not listed there at all.
So tell me again how social media is just for hormonal teenagers? Before social networks such as these, we would have had to go out there and picket the Urban Outfitters store and it probably would have done little to no good. Within hours, the global community was able to pull together and force a large company to take notice of their displeasure.
Power like this can be a dangerous thing though. It’s truly a herd mentality. From what I can tell, no one really stopped to officially investigate whether Stevie was the first one to make the necklace or if the necklace existed thirty years ago in a hippy commune, etc. It was just a, “Hey, that seems unfair, let’s boycott!” kind of gut reaction that spread like complete wildfire across the web, with disastrous results for Urban Outfitters and a huge outpouring of support – and, I believe, purchases – for tru.che.
Another very good example of why businesses should be keeping tabs on what’s going on in the social networks. Do you agree?
