Glittler, or Why an Outside Perspective is Critical to Crisis Prevention

We tell clients to get an outside perspective on things like new products or services whenever possible. When you’ve been close to a project you tend to only see what you want to see, and not what the savage eyes of critics will spot immediately. Boutique and vintage brand BelleChic found out first-hand why this is so important when it happily advertised a new bag reading, “My Favorite Color is Glitter.” Problem is that the internet quickly spotted another way the text could be read…give a scroll down and we’ll catch you after the jump.

my fav colour is also hitler pic.twitter.com/0tMnOGpsOG

— some quack 🎤🦆 (@hurlarious) July 23, 2017

Twitter had a bit of a feeding frenzy over this find, though most of it stayed fairly lighthearted thanks to the fact that the alternate interpretation for the text was pretty clearly a case of “when font attacks”. BelleChic handled the situation well, putting together a new design for the bag very quickly and making sure everyone knew the issue was very much accidental:

We are beyond embarrassed about the design of our GLITTER tote bag 🙈 ✨. We replaced it with a new design. Hope you like this one better! pic.twitter.com/1ZXGAOcnGj

— BelleChic (@bellechicdeals) July 24, 2017

While this issue didn’t create lasting damage, if the internet had chosen to make BelleChic the pariah du jour it could have happened. Before you put any new item in front of the public, whether it’s a product, service, social media campaign or other form of ad, it’s important to look at it from an outside perspective and ask the question, “How could this offend or be misinterpreted?” Neglect that and eventually you’ll find out – the hard way.

Erik Bernstein
[email protected]
www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com