Teddy bears and luxury handbags don't have much in common, or at least we thought so until the last few weeks. There were indeed some strange marketing ploys involving toys and It bags that ended up connecting the two items.
Global teddy bear company Build-A-Bear launched indeed a promotion called "pay-your-age" for its customers in the UK, US and Canada. This meant that a four year old child (and Bonus Club Member) visiting the shop on the designated day of the event (12th July), could make a bear and pay for it only $4.
Everybody likes a bargain, though, which meant the campaign backfired: people started camping outside the stores the night before the special sale and long queues formed. In some cases police was called to regulate the crowd and in a few shops customers were left disappointed as the assistants were said to be utterly unprepared for this unexpected situation (mind you, they may have guessed it would have attracted hundreds of people...).
But if this was a fiasco of bearish proportions (the comments on the Instagram post advertising the events are quite clear...), luxury companies may not be doing much better when it comes to their campaigns.
Fashion fans who follow their favourite international influencers on Instagram were literally bombarded last Thursday with images of said influencers flaunting a brand new Dior "Saddle Bag" (a re-edition of the infamous saddle bag by Galliano for Dior). Usually on Instagram you see people engaging in activities that would make you envious, such as relaxing on a beach, beatifically relaxing on a trendy float on a pool or having breakfast in a luxury hotel. In this case the saddle bag - in all its different incarnations from black to multi-coloured patchwork - seemed to having a rather interesting life in locations all over the world, from London to Hong Kong, from Melbourne to Rome.
Hong Kong-based influencer Elle Lee interpreted the bag with a video that ended up receiving thousands of negative comments for making the bag look cheap (no, it isn't cheap, and you can check some of the bag prices here).
You may argue that all people want to fit in, so when something is popular you feel like joining the cult and the trend; but there are also people who don't want to do so, and there are the wealthy hoi aristoi who prefer investing a considerable amount of money in something unique and exclusive. In a nutshell, this influencer-based campaign seemed a tad too aggressive (and in some cases the posts were not even indicated as sponsored or as adverts, so they did not feature a full disclosure).
The Build-A-Bear and the Saddle Bag campaign have one common denominator: they disappointed consumers - children in the first case and (wealthy) grown-ups (well, young millennials to whom the campaign is aimed at are still grown-ups...) in the second case, and both should be maybe signalled to consumers' protection associations.
Yet the most surprising thing about them is the fact that they come from well-established brands: founded by experienced retail executive Maxine Clark, Build-A-Bear is famous for being sensation when it comes to customisable stuffed toys, while Dior is an iconic French luxury house with a remarkable history. So how come that something magical and cuddly like a teddy bear ended up generating violence on the shop floor and how did something desirable as a "It" bag become a bit of a joke? Blame it on aggressive campaigns that treat us consumers as stupid and disposable items rather than as human beings with a soul, a mind and a personality (in Dior's case, well, since Maria Grazia Chiuri decamped from Valentino and moved to Dior, the French house has been shifting its attention on younger consumers, helped by the support of influencers).
Maybe Build-A-Bear could come up with better birthday offers for its club members or special sales every now and then. As for the various influencers who took part in the Dior campaign, in their defence it must be said they all styled their gifted bags in very personal ways (even though it was a shame that nobody dared destroying and reassembling the item - yes, it may have been a crime, as the bag could still be resold on eBay, but then again, since it was a gift, they could have tried to be more adventurous...).
In a way you can't blame them for jumping on the saddle rather than on the usual bandwagon since, after all, they do have to pay their bills and keep their followers entertained by posting visually striking images of them globetrotting all over the world in extraordinary wardobes deluding teenagers into thinking they will be able to get all this one day.
That said, the destiny of Dior's new saddle bag may be short and sad: having reached its saturation point even before hitting the boutique floor or the online Dior shop, the bag may disappear from the "most trendy" and "most desirable" charts sooner than expected (sure, time will tell). One question remains, though: if Dior gave all these people a saddle bag for free, surely the company can't expect us all to actually pay to get one?
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