DKNY Fails at Facebook: PETA Protests their use of Fur

Yesterday, Mashable drew their readers’ attention to DKNY’s (fashion designer Donna Karan’s brand) Facebook page where People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) were staging a protest against DKNY’s use of fur in their clothing products.

The protest, which involved several Facebook users changing their profile pictures to letters, spelled out DK BUNNY BUTCHER on DKNY’s Facebook wall.
The protest spurred an enormous outburst from the public. Within a few moments of the posts being published on the wall, hundreds of DKNY’s fans began posting their outrage and disgust that the brand was using animal fur in their clothing products. The protest, and subsequent posts/comments, took up the pages entire wall, and was made visible to the brand’s 205,000 followers.



In response, DKNY disabled their wall, disallowing users from posting (although they could still comment on the posts made prior to the wall being disabled). This tactic, rather than diffusing the situation as the brand hoped, did nothing but antagonize the protesters into insulting the brand and Donna Karan herself calling them animal abusers and cowards.

As of this morning, DKNY’s only response has been to completely delete the protest-related posts and to keep their wall disabled, opting to completely ignore the situation. This was quite a drastic social media protest, which we’re sure DKNY was in no way anticipating, but they still reacted exactly against everything we preach when it comes to protecting your brand identity online and in social media.



So—what could DKNY do wrong, and what could they have done to improve the situation?

1. They shouldn’t have disabled their wall. All that disabling their wall did was irritate the protesters and other commenters. Making it so that they were unable to post actually encouraged them to take their arguments to other forms of social media like Twitter (see the screenshot of their Twitter page below).
2. They should have addressed the issue. Leaving the situation for almost 24 hours without doing ANYTHING let the comments and posts get completely out of control. Trying to moderate the discussion, or at least showing that DKNY cared that their fans and followers were upset with the brand could certainly have helped mitigate the situation. 
3. They shouldn’t have pretended like it never happened. Pretending like the situation never happened hasn’t stopped people from talking about it (as proven by the multiple blog posts that were created within hours of the protest) and it hasn’t appeased their disgruntled fans either. All that ignoring the issue has done in fact is prove that DKNY are acting like the cowards the comments on their wall claimed that they were. 

Posted by Amberlie Denny at December 1, 2010 8:00 AM

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