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Filed under: Advertising, Business, Creative | Tags: Brand Protection, Branding, Darfur, Louis Vuitton, Nadia Plesner, PR, Web 2.0
Maybe this post should have been titled “How to damage your Luxury Brand by overly aggressive brand protection”
There are a number of issues, which Luxury Brands have to consider:
- How do you recreate your luxury brand experience online;
- If you get it wrong your Brand has a lot to lose;
- Do you carry out Digital Marketing when getting it wrong is so easy;
- Do you have even more to lose if you don’t do Digital Marketing?
There are also issues of how do you protect your luxury brand from a number of threats: cyber squatting, drop catching, brand abuses etc.
But and it’s a big but, there are those occasions where a Brand Abuser uses your brand for a good cause, although maybe not in a way you wish your brand to be associated with that cause.
That is just the case with Louis Vuitton and Nadia Plesner.
Nadia Plesner is an artist who decided to raise awareness and funds for the ongoing genocide in Darfur. She decided to use her skills in creating an image of a Darfur national in a Paris Hilton style pose with a little dog and a designer handbag.
Louis Vuitton, naturally wish to protect their brand image and as their letter to Nadia Plesner stated their Intellectual Rights. They sent a very polite letter asking that Ms Plesner respects the rights of the original artists who created the design and that she stops using the image.
Ms Plesner wrote back with an equally polite letter stating that she had the right of artistic expression and that while the bag may appear similar it does not include any Louis Vuitton logos or name. She also cited an example of Polish artist Zbigniew Libera who was inspired by Lego sets for another art piece.
I can see both points of view.
While protecting your brand is a natural reaction it does appear that this course of action has not been thought through.
By escalating the situation into a law suit you could easily say ”Louis Vuitton don’t care about Darfur.” While this is a big statement and probably not true, their overly protective stance does come across as ‘we don’t care about Darfur we only care about us!’
It appears that Louis Vuitton have chosen to take a no nonsense approach to Brand protection, a position I normally agree with where the Brand abuser is motivated by commercial gain at the expense of the Brand.
However as I said at the start there is a big but in this instance. The Brand Abuser is trying to do good, any Brand should wish to be associated with that.
Legal action should always be a last resort and never ever should in be left on it’s own, there should always be a Brand or PR representative included in the Legal Team to manage the public perspective of the legal action. This is especially true in a Web 2.0 environment.
So maybe rather than allowing the legal team to do what they do best the Brand Team should have stepped in and managed the situation. If legal action typically costs $50,000 that leaves a lot of flexibility for the Brand Team to manage the situation without the bad publicity.
I believe that while this situation is a negative to the Brand it can be easily turned into a positive. Rather than try and stop the sale of the T-Shirts Louis Vuitton could easily have paid the Artist for her trouble to amend the image so that it was less like the Louis Vuitton bag and then support the cause by either making a donation or taking the image and using it on there own products etc. The correct course of action would depend on how much association they wished with the cause. Darfur, while it is a humanitarian disaster it also has a lot of political issues which a Brand may not wish to take a stance on. An anonymous donation may be appropriate to help with the humanitarian issues while not taking a stance on the political ones.
You can find the website at http://www.nadiaplesner.com/ which will let you see the T-Shirts in question as well a link through to the letter from Louis Vuitton, the reply etc.
What would you have done it you were Louis Vuitton?
Filed under: Business, Technology | Tags: Complaint, HP, Laptop, Poor Service, Tablet PC, Vigalante Consumers
I apologise, this is going to be a bit of a rant but hang in there I’m sure there is a point to the story at the end.
I own an HP Tablet PC, which I bought about a year ago from PC World in the UK for about £1200. I found that when I used it as a Tablet rather than a Laptop I got about 10 minutes into using it and got some IRQ or some such error, which forced a re-boot. I took the Laptop back to PC World who after 2 hours of doing there own checks confirmed I was correct and finally agreed to replace to Laptop.
I got this second Laptop back home and found it to have the same issues, some IRQ error and re-boot.
Having got feed up I moved to Mac’s and to be honest am extremely happy I have done so. So for the last year I have been a happy Mac guy for the first time in 20 years of using computers.
Anyway, the thought of using a Tablet entered my head again and or course the Laptop was expensive so I wanted to give it another go. Still the same problem, so I contact HP customer support via email, who were very helpful and asked me to do some diagnosis and determined that the error was caused by a faulty hard drive.
They organised someone to pick it up and informed me I’d get it back in 7 to 10 days.
3 weeks went by so I called them on a Tuesday. A Problem with the serial number meant they hadn’t even started repairs. After informing them that I wasn’t happy, as they hadn’t informed me of any issues, I was told to call again on Friday.
I called to be informed there was an issue with the serial number and they hadn’t even started repairs. Again after informing them that I wasn’t happy I was told someone would chase this on and call me on the Monday and let me know what was happening.
No call was received, no missed call was received.
I did receive a note from a courier service on the Tuesday saying they had tried to delivery a package but I wasn’t in so they would try again the next business day, which was today.
Package arrived about 13:00 ish.
Excitedly I reattached the battery, power etc and started to play with the Tablet, moving icons, deleted some stuff and installing Skype, the installer was already on the desktop. Arrrrgh, IRQ error and re-boot.
I called the Repair centre only to be told they were outsourced and I had to call HP but I could ask to get put straight through to Customer Complaints. Kindly they gave me the number to save me looking it up.
I called, needed the HP reference then got put through to Customer Complaints who offered to have the Laptop collected for repair again and I’d get it back in 7 to 10 days.
When I suggested that I had no confidence as this is what happened previously and I was looking for an additional level of assurance that it would be fixed rather than a repeat of my previous experience I was told no one in HP could give me that assurance. When I asked to speak to a supervisor I was told I was. When I asked to speak to a manager I was told they were not customer facing. The Customer Complaint lady (she was young but don’t want to be rude and call her a girl) told me that she would pass on my complaints. Okay, good, what assurance do I have that my Laptop is going to be repaired and repaired properly, none was the answer she could not give me that assurance but did I want her to arrange some to collect it and put it in for repairs, I’d get it back in 7 to 10 days!
I explained she was missing the point and was told she wasn’t going to argue with me anymore, did I want her to arrange someone to call me, excitedly I thought finally someone who can help, no the call was to arrange to time to collect the Laptop for repairs.
Talk about useless! I’m extremely frustrated but trying to be clear.
The point is that I can buy any number of laptops, I can go to any number of suppliers, in this age, Marketers call it ‘New Luxury’ its all about the service companies give consumers and a key part of that is handling repairs and complaints.
I read an article about the Vigilante Consumers in Business Week I think, more about that later, but essentially it was how companies are providing such a poor service that consumers have to harass the Executive’s, not customer service in order to get anything fixed. I think the main focus of the article was Comcast in the US.
Until companies realise that service is a key differentiator they are going to struggle.
Come on HP get your act in order!
Update – 28 April 2008:
HP collected the Laptop on the 10th of April with the promise of returning it fixed in 7 to 10 days, sound familiar!
I called today, 12 days after collection to be told there was a problem with the Serial Number so it had only just been passed to a Senior Engineer and they could not tell me when I would get it back. He has sent a note to his supervisor asking if they can prioritise this repair.
They have promised to give me a call back with a date to return the Laptop.
I can accept that HP would not have time to redesign their Customer Service since my first encounter, you would have thought that Customer Complaints would have a bit more impact and that the Laptop would have already been prioritised without the need for me to call again!
I really don’t want this to be a rants and raves blog but I do think as well as allow me to vent my frustration, it is also useful as a case study for how companies miss obvious elements of an integrated consumer experience and so let all their efforts down.
Update 29 April 2008:
I have to give credit where credit is due, I got a call from Richard from HP as he promised. Unfortunately there is no news but hey a call as promised is just the quality of customer service which makes a company a great company.
Update 1 May 2008:
Another call from HP this time n behalf of the Senior Engineer to inform me that they can’t replicate the fault. A bit frustrating considering that they have now had the Laptop for over 6 weeks but after the call two days ago I can cut them some slack.
A bit more frustrating is that they cannot replicate the fault by running a load test! The issue was originally diagnosed as a hard drive fault but for me only happens when I turn the Laptop into a Tablet.
Anyway they are off trying to find the fault again.
Update 12 May 2008:
Finally had the Laptop returned and it appears to be working. I’m really pleased. Looking at the repair note I notice that they have pretty much replaced everything except the hard-drive which they replaced last time.
I do have to laugh though. When I got the Laptop back the first time I also received a note which showed the condition of the laptop, meaning the number of scratches on the case. The first time HP noted about 10 scratches, the second time they noted about 35 and in between the Laptop was in my possession for less than 24 hours and in use for less than 30 minutes! Anyway the scratches are so minor I’m struggling to see them at all.
Hopefully that’s the saga over and I’m going to stop ranting about this.
It is worthwhile however, to keep in mind that Customer Service is as an important part of a Brand and the Brand Image as the next TV Stop or Digital Advertising Campaign!
Filed under: Business, Creative, Mobile, Technology | Tags: Design, iPhone Killer, Mobile, Phone, User Design
I love my iPhone but this is the iPhone Killer!
Amazingly this was created in 2005, not surprisingly its an Award Winner.
The reason I like this so much is that it’s not been constrained by current technology but has looked at what users need and has been designed to accommodate this.
Can’t wait for the hardware technology to catch up!
