Cara Delevingne versus Endangered Species … Who’s going to win?

On the 8th of November in 2017 the luxury fashion brand Jimmy Choo presented the famous model and actress Cara Delevingne on a campaign called “Shimmer in the dark”. The brand campaign shows the beautiful woman walking across the streets of New York at night while she is glowing in her fashionable shoes.

The goal of this campaign was to communicate the brand’s new shoes, by presenting Cara in a shiny revealing red dress, walking self-confident and being surrounded by men, who comment to her “nice shoes lady!”. Consequently, Twitter caught fire and people’s reactions were not good. “Tone deaf”, “Nothing says ‘buy me’ like harassment”, “Perhaps now is not the best moment to run an ad about how cool and sexy catcalling is” were some of the comments on Twitter. The truth is that the brand tried to promote a pair of shoes in a wrong way. People did not pay attention to the product but to the woman’s catcalling. Even worse, many users argued that Jimmy Choo should have took into account “the outburst” of sexual harassment incidents revealed through the media the last months.

On the other hand, in 28th of February 2018 the brand Lacoste presented the campaign of “Lacoste x Save Our Species”. It is the first time that the brand changes its logo and especially does this for a good cause. In a partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the brand urges customers to buy a polo in order to help IUNC protecting wildlife through the proceeds of sales.

The company introduced its campaign by featuring the ten animals logos during the Fashion Week in Paris on 1st of March, where it revealed an amazing philosophy behind it. That is, the number of polos produced with each different endangered animal corresponds to the number of this specific animal’s population that remains in wildlife and therefore they are limited -1775 shirts- to reflect the situation’s seriousness. It is not usual for companies and organizations to change their logos for a campaign and even more it could be a wrong tactic to do so. However, Lacost breaks the rules and changes its logo in order to shout outhere that there is a problem and people must do something immediately. One can see that it is a combination of smart promotion with a powerful social call to action.

Hence, Jimmy Choo campaign follows the beaten track by promoting its product through a celebrity but accepting the negative comments of online users. On the other hand, Lacoste had a great balance of smart PR and emotional CSR by breaking the rules through a change of the logo, resulting in positive users’ reactions. A PR campaign does not necessarily need to be spectacular and impressive, it can be just simple and inspirational.

Marina Kritikou