Yazhe, Liu N10018263

Sterotype picture about women from Miele ‘s offcial Twitter account

The failure

The German manufacturer of appliances Miele celebrated the International Women’s Day by posting on their social media accounts, including Instagram and Twitter. However, the picture they used in the post, which reinforced the stereotype that women should be responsible for housework, disrespected women and was inappropriate for celebrating the power and values of women.  Although the post has been deleted after a few hours, it caused heated discussion (Contentworks Agency, 2019). This issue has been regarded as communication failure of Miele, and the problem lay in their failure of effectively managing their social media accounts . The following analysis will discuss the causes of their failure, what led to the failure, and how to avoid such a failure. 

Why they fail

Some factors led to this particular failure of Miele’s post on the international women’s day. To begin with, Miele failed to convey appropriate messages on their social media platform while overly focusing on gaining profits. Understanding the audience is significant for expressing socially appropriate information and how this information will be understood by the audience, so the audience is essential for building the context (Boyd, 2010, p.10) In order to cater for the needs of the invisible audience, when participating online, people often imagine the feelings and understanding of their audience to decide whether or not their behaviors are socially appropriate and intrigue the audience (Boyd, 2010, p.10) In contrast, Miele failed to commit to their audience while managing their social media accounts, since most of their attention was diverted to connecting their product with the trend on that day. Furthermore, the effects of ‘collapsed contexts’ contributed to this failure as well. (Boyd, 2010, p.11) With the prevalence of online participation, people are forced to deal with audience from different and even conflicting contexts (Boyd, 2010, p.11). The target audience of Miele are those who share interest in appliances, and most of their are housewives or married ones. However, their potential audience could also be independent women who were successful in their careers. When Miele utilized the special day to promote their brand, they ignored their potential audience who would be offended after viewing the post instead of feeling respected as a woman. More importantly, social media provide technological tools for network publics not only to share interest and join the discussion, but also to stand together and combat the disrespect. (Boyd, 2010, p.1) In this case, persistence, replicability, scalability, and searchability accompanied the posting of offensive images on Miele’s twitter (Boyd, 2010, p.7) As a result, even though the inappropriate posts had been delated, the discussion about them did not stop, leading to negative effects on the company. 

Another factor that may contribute to the failure of Miele’s post is related to the concept of ‘spreadable media’ (Fuchs, 2014, p3). The content is easier to broadcast because ‘technical affordance’ allows the social media platforms to connect their users together to exchange valuable information that drive users to create a shared media platform. (Green and Jenkins, 2011, p.112) The post of Miele’s included a heated topic that connected audiences through twitter to discuss the stereotypes facing women. Therefore, the post was widely retweeted and commented after it had been posted, which demonstrated that their audiences were using ‘technical affordance’ of social media to spread what Miele had posted and fight against it on twitter. (Green and Jenkins, 2011, p. 112) Although Miele chose to delete their tweet, the spreadablity of media allowed the spreading of the post to continue . Consequently, Miele ended up with criticism and negative comments that would undermine the brand’s reputation. 

Additionally, the governance of twitter in ethic issues is not very strict and it lacks any clear ethic guidelines for users, which also contributed to Miele’s offensive post. According to Gillespi (2010,p.255), social media platforms such as Twitter should not only ensure legal activities of their users, but also emphasize personal and institutional ethics and be devoted to creating a healthy online community. In the case of Miele, the lack of supervision and restrictions on twitter resulted in the posting of inappropriate information. Although twitter is not responsible for the content posted by its users, it is still responsible for ensuring the users understand what is appropriate to post and what is not through clear guidelines (Gillespie, 2010,p.255). Miele’s social media failure resulted from the lack of awareness of suitable contexts. The lack of guidelines from twitter failed to enable Miele realize the issue in their tweet when they posted the stereotypical pictures, they were ignoring those independent women who were working hard to improve their social status. Accordingly, Miele’s post was criticized by the audience as it was presented in the image.

Lastly, as a company for appliances, Miele’s main motivation for posting on the International Women’s Day was for commercial profits: through association with a trending topic on that day, their posts may allow more audiences to be involved with their advertisement. The ‘owned media’ enables companies to have more control over the use of their social media accounts, including managing their own Youtube channel and posting advertisement on their own (Serazio & Duffy, 2017, p.486). However, the company’s focus on profits without consideration for the audiences resulted in their social media failure. Thus, Miele was backlashed by women and men who supported women on their use of the stereotypical picture about women through their ‘commercial logic’. (Serazio & Duffy, 2017, p490). Ultimately, Miele’s unprofessional behaviour led to customer’s dissatisfaction and undermining of their brand.

How to avoid

The failure of Miele’s post could be avoided in two stages. The first stage is to predict the reaction and perspectives of audiences before publishing information on social media platforms. In this way, the company can ensure the post or image is appropriate to publish with the assistance of ‘content curation’ tools such as Flipboard and Pocket, therefore avoiding the risks on offending certain audiences (Graham,2019)Secondly, instead of simply removing the published post, Miele should also address the influence of its posts that might negatively affect its reputation. Taking ‘crisis management’ as an example of preventing the worst situtation happen to Miele.(Graham,2019)Personally, I would apologize to the offended pubics through tweets after deleting the inappropriate images, and continue to post more positive images about women to change the audience’s attitudes and express our sincerity. With these approaches, negative impact on Miele’s reputation will be greatly reduced. (Boyd, 2010, p.7)

Conclusion

In conclusion, the fail of Miele company resulted from an inappropriate post with disrespectful picture published on the International Women’s Day. The factors that had contributed to the post were social media failure, including the failure of predicting the potential audience’s reaction, and features of network publics, such as spreadability of social media, the lack of governance of social media platform and their business ambition . Lastly, Miele’s failure could be avoided if Miele had predicted their audience’s reaction and prevented the negative effects of the post on the company by equipping with crisis management ability.

Reference List

Boyd, D. (2011). Social Network Sites as Networked Publics – Affordances, 

Dynamics, and Implications. A Networked Self – Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites, 39-58.

Contentworks Agency (2019, January 15). Social Media Fails-Facebook [Web log 

post]. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@contentworks/social-media-fails-facebook-e7757c4e6946.

Fuchs, C. (2014). Social Media as Participatory Culture. In Social Media – a critical 

introduction, 52-66.

Gillespie, T. (2018). Regulation of and by platforms. In J. Burgess, A. Marwick, and 

T. Poell. The SAGE Handbook of Social Media, 254-278.

Green, J., & Jenkins, H. (2011). Spreadable Media. How Audiences Create Value and 

Meaning in a Networked Economy. The Handbook of Media Audiences edited by Virginia Nightingale, 109-127.

Mcargobe (2018 October 13). FLIPBOARD: A PERFECT TOOL TO BOOST YOUR READING[Web log post].Retrieved from https://mcargobe.wordpress.com/2014/10/13/flipboard-a-perfect-tool-to-boost-your-reading-low-b2/

Serazio, M. & Duffy, B. (2018). Social media marketing.The SAGE Handbook of 

Social Media, 481-496.

Timothy.G.(2019) KCB206 Social Media, Self and Society: Week 8[Lecture note]. Retrieved from https://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_142802_1&content_id=_7846358_1

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In early 2000, the establishment of social media including Facebook and YouTube is part of the transformation of web 2.0, developing from data-based page into a web page that can be participated. (Stevenson, M, 2018) Also, social media is available for money making.( Marwick, A,2013)In the world of fashion industry, social media play a significant role in reshaping the industry, not only help the industry to gain more profits, but alter it into a participatory, accessible industry for the ordinary people. In the following content, the further details will be described including the rise of social media influencer and marketing strategy.

Transformation

Fashion Icons

The first transformation is the emergence of fashion influencer in social media who change the status between brands and consumers because of the participatory culture. Social media users participate in the platforms and they form as a community, which is referred to the concept of participatory culture. One feature of social media is participant that users can involve in the content creation and they can engage in the process by spreading the content in recreation and sharing forms. (Fuchs, 2014). There is rare limitation for users to participate and social media enable them to connect with each other. (Fuchs, 2014) In addition, “participation means that humans have the right and reality to be part of decisions and to govern and control the structures that affect them.” (Fuchs, 2014) Hence, when social media enable users to participate in a variety of content, they are empowered and affect the industry. In the fashion industry, the consumers are reconstructed through digital technology where it produces fashion icons. (Boyd, 2010). By using social media, the consumers are no longer passive because they can involve in the industry, share their look and follow the social media accounts of the fashion magazines to learn the color code and improve their fashion sense. Gradually, they are constructing their own fashion online community that inevitable demand the leader who are the social media influencers and they are recognized by the mainstream fashion industry as fashion icons. (The fashion network, 2018) They share their fashion style in multiple platforms such as Instagram and YouTube and their fans will be inspired by their look and copy it. Thus, social media influencer becomes the leader of the fashion trend and govern the popularity of fashion products, which was impossible in the magazine times. For this reason, fashion brands realize the power of social media fashion icons, they start to cooperate with them.

https://www.glamour.com/story/popular-bags-with-girls-names (Leah Melby Clinton’s image.2015)

Taking Alexa Chung as an example, who have about 3.2 million fans in Instagram, she became an ambassador for brands and have her own name handbag. (Alexa, C, 2019) Through the corporation, the fashion brand becomes more popular and famous, which boost consumption. Generally, the fashion icons as consumers and leader of the audience can participate in the fashion industry and bring the relatively equal relationship between brands and audiences because a fashion trend is governing by what fashion products the social media influencers wear and use.

“SEE NOW AND BUY NOW”

Secondly, the affordances of social media alter the fashion industry into an engaging and interacting industry, particularly affect the marketing strategy of fashion brands. “Affordances of new media have altered the consumption, production, transmission models of entertainment.”(Timothy G, 2019, week5)Moreover, “the concept of affordance is generally used to describe what material artifacts such as media technologies allow people to do.” (Taina and Anne, 2017, p3) Primarily, the limitation of affordances does not strict invisible sense, also, these enable the audience to feel and hear. (Taina and Anne, 2017) It is not about perception but relates to action and interaction. (Gaver, 1996, p114) Besides, affordances can actively be noticed by the audiences and the existence of this is for social interaction. (Gaver, 1996, p114) Therefore, when we discuss the affordances of social media, we need to consider the potential action that has a connection with its user and how user use it to build social interaction. (Taina and Anne, 2017, p3) More importantly, social media affordance should be easy to be comprehended by the audience, when the audience use it, they are not only approaching the afforded action but also view the action with multiple meaning. When new affordance being designed, the further meaning of it can affect the user’s perception and their thoughts will guide them to use affordance in distinct ways. (Taina and Anne, 2017, pp23-24) Hence, the significance of social media affordance have been noticed by many industries, it is a meaningful technology to transform the relationship between industry and customers, its interactive feature help industry has more interaction with their consumer and gains a better understanding of real need from their customers. The fashion industry’s marketing strategy has been altered as they need to cater to the special demand of potential customers and allow their customers to have more engagement with them in social media platform through the affordance. “More and more fashion brands decide to leverage it and broadcast live their fashion shows making them available not only to an exclusive audience but to everyone.” (Mphamquang, 2018) With the assistance of live show affordance in social media platform, users are more likely to engage with the fashion week and express their perspective about the new collection and it contributes to building intimacy relationship with brands. Additionally, the live show has boosted the consumption of the new collection. For example, because the live show is an instant information broadcasting affordance, it functionally allows social media users to interact and engage with the updated content while them viewing it. Thus, a new commercial model in the fashion industry have been come up with, “SEE NOW AND BUY NOW”. (Mphamquang, 2018)

(https://digital-me-up.com/2018/01/06/impact-social-media-fashion-industry-see-now-buy-now-model/) (mphamquang’s image,2018)

Social media platform afford the tags that can insert words and links that directly indicate buy, which will encourage audiences’ desire to purchase. Accordingly, after or while the audience watching the show, they are more likely to purchase fashion products through the tags in their screen that is the link of online shopping website. The words in the tags drive users’ to pay practical action and it feels urging to buy the clothes or shoes that they are more willing to click the link in tags for shopping. Burberry is the first luxury brands to positively use social media and integrate it into their marketing strategy, who have successfully increased the sales by see now and buy now model. (Limei,H ,2016)Their customers watch the show through social media and purchase the products by clicking the tags. In general, because of the two social media affordances (live show and tags), the interactive and intimacy shopping mode improve the sales and users feel more close to the fashion industry.

Conclusion

The fashion industry is reshaped by social media and it has been transformed to adapt to the development of new media. But the fashion industry should not blur the distinctions of social media and advertisement and do not completely commodify social media. (Timothy G, 2019, week5)

Reference List

Alexa C. (2019, February 14). Alexa Chung: my life in clothes. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/af12e92c-29fa-11e9-a5ab-ff8ef2b976c7

Bucher, Taina, and Anne,H. (2017). “The Affordances of Social Media Platforms.” In The SAGE Handbook of Social Media, edited by Jean Burgess, Thomas Poell, and Alice Marwick. London and New York: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Danah, B. (2010). “Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications.” In Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (ed. Zizi Papacharissi), pp. 39-58. 

Fuchs, C. (2014). Social media as participatory culture. In Social media: A critical introduction (pp. 52-68). London: SAGE Publications Ltd doi: 10.4135/9781446270066.n3

Gaver,WW (1996) Situating action II: Affordances for interaction: The social is material for

design. Ecological Psychology 8(2): 111–129.

Leah Melby Clinton. (2015). The 20 Most Popular Handbag Names of All Time—Do You Have a Bag Named For You? Retrived from https://www.glamour.com/story/popular-bags-with-girls-names

Limei, H. (2016, September 17). How Burberry is Operationalising ‘See Now, Buy Now’ [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/how-burberry-is-operationalising-see-now-buy-now

Marwick, A. (2013). “Introduction.”  In Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity and Branding in the Digital Age, 1-19. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Mphamquang. (2018, January 6). The Impact of Social Media on The Fashion Industry: The “See Now Buy Now” Model [Digital Me Up]. Retrieved from https://digital-me-up.com/2018/01/06/impact-social-media-fashion-industry-see-now-buy-now-model/

The Fashion Network. (2018). How Social Media Has Changed the Game in the Fashion Industry. Retrieved from https://thefashionetwork.com/how-social-media-has-changed-the-game-in-the-fashion-industry/  

Timothy, G. (2019) KCB206: Social media, self and society: week5 Lecture Notes. Retrieved from https://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_142802_1&content_id=_7846358_1

Stevenson, M. (2018). From hypertext to hype and back again: exploring the roots of social media in early web culture. In J. BurgessA. Marwick & T. Poell The sage handbook of social media (pp. 69-88). 55 City Road, London: SAGE Publications Ltd doi: 10.4135/9781473984066.n5

In early 2000, the establishment of social media including Facebook and YouTube is part of the transformation of web 2.0, developing from data-based page into a web page that can be participated. (Stevenson, M, 2018) Also, social media is available for money making.( Marwick, A,2013)In the world of fashion industry, social media play a significant role in many aspects of reshaping the industry, altering it into a participatory, accessible industry for the ordinary people. In the following content, the further details will be described including the rise of social media influencer, marketing strategy.

Transformation

1. Fashion Icons

The first transformation is the emergence of fashion influencer in social media who change the status between brands and consumers because of the participatory culture. One feature of social media is participating that users can involve in the content creation and they can engage in the process by spreading the content in recreation and sharing forms. (Fuchs, 2014). There is bare limitation for users to participate and social media enable them to connect with each other. (Fuchs, 2014) In addition, “participation means that humans have the right and reality to be part of decisions and to govern and control the structures that affect them.” (Fuchs, 2014) Hence, when social media enable the users to participate in a variety of content, they are empowered and affect the industry. In fashion industry, the consumers are reconstructed through digital technology where it produce the fashion icons. (Boyd, 2010). By using social media, the consumers are no longer passive because they can involve in the industry, share their look and follow the social media accounts of the fashion magazines to learn the colour code and improve their fashion sense. Gradually, they are constructing their own fashion online community that inevitable demand the leader who are the social media influencers and they are recognized by the mainstream fashion industry as fashion icons. (The fashion network, 2018) They share their fashion style in multiple platforms such as Instagram and YouTube and their fans will be inspired by their look and copy it. Thus, social media influencer become the leader of fashion trend and govern the popularity of fashion products, which was impossible in the magazine times. For this reason, the fashion brands realize the power of social media fashion icons, they start to cooperate with them.

https://www.glamour.com/story/popular-bags-with-girls-names  (Leah Melby Clinton’s image.2015)

Taking Alexa Chung as an example, who have about 3.2 million fans in Instagram, she became an ambassador for brands and have her own name handbag.(Alexa.C, 2019) Through the corporation, the fashion brand become more popular and famous, which boost the consumption. Generally, the fashion icons as consumers and audience can participate in fashion industry and bring relatively equal relationship between brands and audiences because fashion trend is no longer only depends on the designer’s fashion sense.

2. “SEE NOW AND BUY NOW”

Secondly, the affordances of social media alter the fashion industry into an engaging and interacting industry, particularly affect the marketing strategy of fashion brands. To begin with, “the concept of affordance is generally used to describe what material artifacts such as media technologies allow people to do.” (Taina and Anne, 2017, p3) Primarily, the limitation of affordances does not strict invisible sense, also, these enable audience to feel and hear. (Taina and Anne, 2017) It is not about perception but relate to action and interaction. (Gaver, 1996, p114) Besides, affordances can actively be noticed by the audiences and the existence of this is for social interaction. (Gaver, 1996, p114) Therefore, when we discuss the affordances of social media, we need to consider the potential action that have connection with its user and how user use it to build social interaction. (Taina and Anne, 2017, p3) More importantly, social media affordance should be easy to be comprehend by the audience, when audience use it, they are not only approaching the afforded action, but also view the action with multiple meaning. When new affordance being designed, the further meaning of it can affect user’s perception and some of them might disagree with it because of the meaning in their understanding. (Taina and Anne, 2017, pp23-24) Hence, the significance of social media affordance have been noticed by many industries, it is a useful technology to transform the relationship between industry and customers, its interactive features help industries have more interaction with their consumer and gain better understanding of real need from their customers. The fashion industry’s marketing strategy have been altered as they need to cater for the special demand of potential customers and allow their customers to have engagement with them in social media platform through the affordance. “More and more fashion brands decide to leverage it and broadcast live their fashion shows making them available not only to an exclusive audience but to everyone.” (Mphamquang, 2018) With the assistance of live show affordance, users are more likely to engage with the fashion week and express their perspective about the new collection and it contribute to build intimacy relationship with brands and their customers. Additionally, the live show have boost the consumption of the new collection. For example, because live show is an instant information broadcasting affordance, it functionally allow social media users to interact and engage with the updated content while them viewing it. Thus, a new commercial mode in fashion industry have been came up with, “SEE NOW AND BUY NOW”. (Mphamquang, 2018)

(https://digital-me-up.com/2018/01/06/impact-social-media-fashion-industry-see-now-buy-now-model/)  (mphamquang’s image,2018)

Social media platform afford the tags that can inserts words and links, accordingly, after or while the audience watching the show, they can purchase fashion products through the tags in their screen that is the link of online shopping website. Social media users are more likely to buy the products as they comprehend this affordance by the words in it that drive them to click and purchase. Because of the two social media affordances (live show and tags), the interactive and intimacy shopping mode improve the sales and users feel more close to the fashion industry.

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