An incredible 12 million people saw the social media video of an attractive tramper complaining that her North Face coat was not waterproof. North Face recorded themselves delivering a new coat to her mountain location by helicopter.
The fast response got positive media attention. But that’s not good-enough for PR, because the core question went unanswered: Why was the tramper’s coat not up to the advertised job? You don’t eradicate reputation-affecting problems with marketing fluff. Not providing an explanation in the video meant that people remained unimpressed.
There is a tougher problem for PR professionals though – even if North Face did address the issue, their video-in-reply was only seen by one-third of the people who saw the original rain-soaked complaint from the mountain top.
