In early January, a man was found naked in the background of a children’s picture of the first e-retailer website in France, La Redoute.fr. Obviously this was not done on purpose but was a mistake made during the photo shoot. The unexpected fail had quickly been removed from the website, but it was too late. In less than 4 hours, the naked man became the 2nd twitted topic in the world. It made headlines of traditional media and news channels. Everyone talked about La Redoute’s mistake, laughed about it and made his own parody of it.Facing this crisis communication, how should La Redoute react? We decided to react quickly and twist this bad buzz into a good buzz. We launched a hunted fake fails game on their website, launched by a corporate video. 14 fake fails were hidden among 33,600 pictures on the website La Redoute.fr. In less than 48 hours, all the pictures were found, 1,200 articles were published, and people were talking about how La Redoute had taken back the control on its e-reputation.

La Redoute is facing a crisis communication where not only La Redoute’s client but also a wider audience is talking about this outrageous fail, questioning La Redoute’s reputation and mocking the brand.In this critical situation how should la Redoute react? Or is it better not to risk anything otherwise the crisis will start again and even bigger? Our aim is to twist this bad buzz into good buzz. La Redoute needs to take the control back on its e reputation and transform all the negative conversation into a positive halo effect.

We launched a hunted fake fails game on La Redoute’s website. This fail hunt was introduced by a corporate video posted on social networks. This video invited internet users to search for 14 fake fails among the 33,600 pictures on the website La Redoute.fr.

Once we had posted the corporate video on YouTube, we spread the news on La Redoute’s Facebook and Twitter account (a Wednesday at 4pm, a high traffic moment on La redoute’s social media account), and simultaneously made visible the 14 fake fails on La Redoute’s website.

Initially, we thought that the participants would take 1 week to find all the pictures, but in less than 4 hours already 6 pictures were found the community was sharing, liking, and tweeting the operation. We gave guidelines to la Redoute’s community manager to give some clues and engage even more people. After 48 hours all the pictures were found.

The objective was to take back the control of La Redoute’s e-reputation, and that is what we did among our target audience but also to people who know the brand and care for it from near and far.

We won since the beginning of the operation 100,000 fans on Facebook and generated numerous positive topics on this specific operation.

The video had 220,000 views in less than 48 hours, and during the operation the traffic increased of 70%. We did not invest a dime in media, neither had a press release as this video was our ambassador, but as the bounce back was smart enough we had 1,200 press articles, and a $1,069,000 earned media.

Once we decided to react, we knew that we needed to answer to our target audience where the story initially began (social networks). The answer’s tone needed to be humorous enough to make our audience understand that even if la Redoute apologises for its mistake the brand takes it with humour.

Furthermore, everything that we do needs to be business oriented; that is why we needed to engage with humour our extended audience and drive them to La Redoute’s website.

In early January, a man is found naked in the background of a children’s picture of the first e-retailer website in France: La Redoute.fr.

Obviously, this was not done on purpose but was a mistake made during the photo shoot. The unexpected fail has quickly been removed from the website, but it was too late. In less than 4 hours, the naked man became the 2nd -most tweeted topic in the world. It made the headlines of traditional media and news channels.

Everyone talked about La Redoute’s mistake, laughed about it and made their own parody of it.