The case of the stolen necklace: what Urban Outfitters should have done in a crisis
Friday, May 27, 2011 at 12:50PM 
My good friend and social media consulting colleague, Amber Karnes, was checking her Facebook feeds yesterday morning when she came across a Tumblr post by an independent jewelry artist who claimed Urban Outfitters stole her designs. The artist, Stevie Keorner, made a very compelling case. Outraged, Amber simply tweeted a link to the blog post:
Her tweet instantly received hundreds of retweets. Hours later, blogs like the Huffington Post and Boing Boing were reporting the news and celebrities like Miley Cyrus were bashing Urban Outfitters on Twitter. Urban Outfitters became an international trending topic on Twitter, and Amber's tweet was the top tweet about the topic! Amber wrote about how the entire sequence of events unfolded and how this story went viral, including her own PR perspective. It's definitely worth the read to see how someone with only about 1,000 twitter followers can create quite a stir for a large corporation: Anatomy of a trending topic: How Twitter & the crafting community put the smackdown on Urban Outfitters.
Working in PR, the interesting part in all of this is that Urban Outfitters has done nothing substantial to respond. Within hours of Twitter breaking the news, the company sent one tweet relevant to the topic:
Beyond that, there has been no public response to this crisis. It appears Urban Outfitters removed the product from its stores (online and offline), but the company has not made any public announcements. This lack of response when their brand is virally getting slammed by people supporting a boycott is baffling. If I were consulting Urban Outfitters, here are some recommendations I would have given them:
1. Engage the influencers. There are several people, such as Amber, who were directly involved in spreading this story to the masses. These influencers should have been contacted immediately--via Twitter, via e-mail, via phone--to assure them their voices are important to the company and that Urban Outfitters cares and is looking into the matter.
2. Apologize. When a company does wrong, it's crucial to apologize and take responsibility. In the age of social media, this has to happen FAST. Every organization should have a playbook for handling crisis responses so it can react with timeliness to a crisis erupting virally online. Granted there are probably legal implications to be considered when announcing an apology, but the legal department should not keep the PR department from doing what's right. Urban Outfitters should publicly apologize for the gaff and explain the company has taken the products off the shelf while it continues to look further into the allegations. Using the company's website, Facebook, Twitter and blogger relations, Urban Outfitters should explain this gaff and explain how they are making it right.
3. Make it right. First off, you have to attack this problem at the source. That means looking internally at the organization and determining, "how did this happen?" What in Urban Outfitter's corporate culture allowed for this kind of bad corporate behavior? Urban Outfitters should be putting the appropriate measures in place internally to ensure this practice of stealing ideas from independent artists discontinues immediately. Perhaps even, heads should hit the chopping block.
Externally, a lot more goes into making it right publicly. Sometimes, you have to pay the Pied Piper. Urban Outfitters should come to an agreement with the designer they ripped off and should be investigating other instances within the company where this has happened (this is not the only allegation). Settling with these designers may involve the legal process, but it's PR's responsibility to get the message out that Urban Outfitters is committed to supporting independent designers and is actively working to resolve this problem.
4. Create goodwill. Urban Outfitters has outraged its customers, who value indie design and artistic expression. It's going to take a lot of work to repair that reputation damage. Urban Outfitters needs to launch a campaign celebrating independent designers. Perhaps they need a new product line where the designers are showcased and receive credit (similar to how Tiffany celebrates their designers, such as Paloma Picasso and Elsa Peretti). Beyond that, Urban Outfitters needs a longterm strategy for engaging the crafters and designers online who launched this attack on its brand. The damage is repairable if Urban Outfitters is willing to do the right thing.
While the delayed response to this crisis has already occurred, I still think Urban Outfitters could make this right. I hope they do because I used to love shopping there.
What do you think? Was one tweet from Urban Outfitters enough to weather the social media storm? What would you have recommended if you were on their PR team? And if you, too, support this boycott, did the company do enough to win you back? What would have to happen to make you shop at Urban Outfitters again?