Interestingly, rather than an official press release or press conference, H&M chose to address the issue and apologise via their Instagram account. Their intent may have been to dilute the situation using the same channels that escalated the uproar, however after analysing the Instagram post using Hopper HQ’s analytics tool we discovered a rather interesting byproduct of this whole debacle.ĭata from Hopper HQ analytics shows the original apology note posted by H&M on their Instagram account has amassed over 311k likes and 62k comments, giving the post the highest engagement across all of their posts with an official engagement rate of 1.55%,ranking it as the top post ever published to by H&M.
We’re again reminded of a more broader theme the power of social media as a vessel of influence. ‘Lapse in judgement or obvious ignorance’īesides the lapse in judgement or obvious ignorance from H&M, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen egalitarian consumers take to Twitter & Instagram to voice their dissent against a multinational company.
Since then, the product which originally appeared on their UK site, has been removed. The social media outrage snowballed and caught headline news very quickly, garnering criticism from consumers, industry experts and celebrities, most notably chart topping musicians The Weeknd and G-Eazy expressed distaste towards the advertisement via social media, with both musicians cancelling their partnerships with the fashion brand.įacing much pressure H&M issued a statement via their Instagram account- for the decision surrounding the product advertisement and accepting responsibility for the oversight, followed by another apology the following day, reiterating their stance on the issues, and apologising again. The advert sparked huge backlash on social media, with many labelling the advert as racist, inappropriate and distasteful. High street fashion retailer H&M have come under fire for a product advertisement featuring a hoodie with the slogan “Coolest monkey in the jungle” modelled by a black child. We’re now in 2018 and would have hoped that other brands took lessons from the mistakes of their peers, well it seems not. This isn’t the first time a brand has been chastised on social media for poor marketing choices in 2017 a we witnessed Unilever’s personal care brand Dove face the outrage of consumers over an online campaign, earlier that year we also saw soft drink producer Pepsico fall under scrutiny for an advert featuring Kendall Jenner at a social justice protest.
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