I’m very late writing about this, but I have an opinion and here it is. The Balenciaga backlash about the pictures of children wearing bondage holding teddy bears has died down a bit. Some people burned their Balenciaga gear showing that their actions would speak louder than their words.
But, I know we will never truly cancel Balenciaga and here’s why. According to historical data, other brands that have had similar scandals still exist, were never cancelled and are thriving today. I remember taking courses in a MBA program at Georgia State University and the first challenge we were given was to handle a company crisis.
If you think like the CEO of Balenciaga, you’re going to pull together the best PR Crisis Management Firm and let them clean it up. The Olivia Pope’s of the world are waiting for things like this to happen so that they can put on their capes and save our favorite brands’ reputations. So far Balenciaga has taken the scapegoat approach, blaming the incident on Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti which is probably advice from their PR team.
Owned by Luxury Group Kering, Balenciaga is under the same umbrella as Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Bottega Venetta — three hugely successful brands that have suffered their own PR nightmares but certainly not to this extent.
Let’s remember Gucci’s brush with being cancelled. Gucci’s scandal with Dapper Dan when Gucci misappropriated Dapper Dan’s designs. Gucci cleaned it up by reaching out to Dapper Dan and forged a partnership. Gucci also sent a sweater down the runway that appeared to many as ‘black face’ offending the black community. The brand issued an apology, claimed full accountability, announced an initiative to promote diversity and inclusivity in-house and partnered with industries of the black community. After that, Gucci was back in our good graces.
It lends to the question, ‘Can we or should we separate a brands art faux pas from the people that run the company? If we separated the two we would insist on the firing of the people that were directly related to the scandal, and not cancel the entire brand. What does cancelling an entire brand look like anyway? We really don’t have a definition because I can’t think of a time that it has ever been done.
I think we have a hard time cancelling brands because we love their art. Maybe not the art surrounding the controversies, but the art as a whole. We also take into consideration the celebrity support of the brand and how the brand handled the scandal. At the end of the day, brands are run by people and history has proven that we always seem to give them grace.
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