On Wednesday, the influencer and entrepreneur Chiara Ferragni returned to publishing content on Instagram, the platform that has contributed most to building her fame and career. He hadn’t posted anything since December 18, when he shared a video in which he apologized for “having made a communication error” in the now famous promotional campaign for a line of pandoros from the confectionery company Balocco, in which he had given the impression that the proceeds would have gone to charity, which is not true.
A few days earlier the Antitrust, the Competition and Market Authority, had harshly fined two companies owned by Ferragni for misleading advertising, triggering a significant image crisis. In recent weeks Ferragni has received a lot of criticism and attacks, she has been the subject of debates and editorials, and the impression is that all this may have significantly compromised his public reputation, which up to now has been generally positive. And for an influencer like her, reputation is a fundamental element of her activities and earnings.
In the first Stories published on Instagram after the apology video, Ferragni told his followers – who, despite the recent scandal, are still 29.5 million – that he missed them. Then she thanked both the people who have been close to her in recent weeks and those who “expressed their opinion, even negative, in a calm and constructive tone, because in life there is always time to discuss, reflect and start again”.
The Stories attracted a lot of attention because Ferragni normally publishes several contents on Instagram a day, and therefore his silence was noticed. But also because they are the first step in what could be a long process of rehabilitating his reputation, which will help Ferragni maintain his influence on his public and reassure the companies with which he has commercial relationships. Ferragni must demonstrate that she is still a reliable collaborator and a credible testimonial, if she does not want to lose contracts and sources of income.
Given the enormous attention paid to the public and private lives of celebrities (to which, before social networks, above all a vast sector of journalism dedicated to the search for scandals and gossip contributed), even before social networks it was quite easy for actors, singers, models, intellectuals and other well-known personalities stumbled upon a more or less serious scandal at a certain point in their career, capable of changing the public’s perception in the short or long term.
Since the careers of celebrities also largely depend on how the public perceives them, there is an entire branch of public relations – the field that deals with managing and disseminating information about individuals, companies or other types of organizations to the public to influence their perception – dedicated to “crisis management”, i.e. the measures to be taken to minimize the consequences of a sudden and disruptive event. A crisis can be the revelation of an affair or a substance abuse problem, the spread of non-consensual intimate images, or, increasingly, the strong reaction of a mass of people online to the sharing of a controversial opinion.
– Read also: For celebrities, apologizing has become part of the job
In the case of Chiara Ferragni, the crisis in question began when the Antitrust fined two of her companies for 1.4 million euros, as well as the confectionery company Balocco, for a promotional campaign for a line of Balocco pandori to which Ferragni had collaborated in 2022: the “Pandoro Pink Christmas”, presented as a charity initiative for the Regina Margherita hospital in Turin. According to the Antitrust, the campaign was deceptive because it made people believe that the sale of each pandoro contributed to a charitable donation to the hospital, when in reality the amount of the donation had already been previously determined by Balocco, regardless of sales.
The fine had great media coverage, even being commented on by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni; making you lose the influencer has around 157 thousand followers, however a small fraction of the total number; and leading the multinational eyewear company Safilo to interrupt its collaboration with Ferragni.
Before taking a break from Instagram, Ferragni had published a much discussed apology video, especially due to the fact that the influencer had decided to present himself with humble and modest-looking make-up and clothes, very different from his usual style. According to Kelcey Kintner, vice president of the company crisis management international Red Banyan which has been dealing with similar cases for years, the initiatives that Ferragni is adopting, however, follow exactly the pattern of behavior that is recommended to celebrities in these cases.
“The fact that she apologized immediately is good, and the apology seemed genuine to me, although I think she could definitely have taken more responsibility for her mistake,” he says. “If you call it ‘a miscommunication’ you don’t exactly give the impression that you are taking responsibility for what went wrong.”
Kintner also believes that staying silent after the apology was a good move: “If you apologize and then immediately go back to posting as you always would and promoting your brand, you can come across as tone deaf.” [alle preoccupazioni del pubblico]. Anyone who finds themselves in the middle of a mess like this wants to move from bad publicity to positive posts as quickly as possible, but there’s no way to flip a switch and immediately make things better. It takes time to rebuild the trust of the fans, it doesn’t happen overnight. But fans know that celebrities are also human beings who make mistakes: the important thing is to admit the mistake, overcome it and change your behavior accordingly.”
Ferragni, for example, announced that he will donate one million euros to the Regina Margherita hospital and that in the future he will separate “completely any charitable activity, which I have always done and will continue to do, from commercial activities”. According to Kintner it is a sensible move: one of the central pieces of advice he would like to give crisis manager is to demonstrate that you are ready to accompany the apology with concrete action with a strong impact. “I would also advise you to consider volunteering at the hospital and learn more about the suffering of sick children,” she says.
«Whether it is a slip taken out of its original context and gone viral, or a more serious ethical violation, the approach generally remains the same: you need to quickly address the problem by showing sincerity, ensuring you know how to assume your responsibilities and adopting concrete measures to correct the damage”, confirms Lauren Beeching, founder of Honest London, another crisis and online reputation management company.
In this sense, Beeching believes that Ferragni’s choice to avoid publishing content on Instagram for a while served to recognize the gravity of the situation and demonstrated a cautious approach, aimed at rehabilitating his reputation in the long term. In his experience, stopping posting online for a certain period after a crisis also serves to take time to develop a new strategy for interacting with your audience by communicating a greater sense of transparency and authenticity. Furthermore, Ferragni’s break from social media occurred around Christmas, a period in which marketing activities are particularly intense.
According to Beeching, in addition to regaining the public’s trust, Ferragni must also focus on avoiding long-term repercussions in his relationships with the other companies with which he collaborates as an influencer, model and designer, including Intimissimi, Bulgari, Nespresso and Louis Vuitton.
“Brands are increasingly cautious when it comes to associating their name with that of an influencer or celebrity, and often look for people whose reputation is pristine,” explains Beeching. «Ferragni’s challenge will be to demonstrate through a genuine and continued commitment in the field of charity that he has learned from his mistakes. This kind of effort can help rebuild a reputation in line with that desired by brands: to ensure the success of the operation, constant monitoring of public opinion and media representation will be necessary.”
– Read also: Anyone who is famous on the internet is not famous-famous
2024-01-04 13:32:49
#mess #Chiara #Ferragni #Post
