ONLINE Reputation and the chiara ferragni case

If you live in Italy you know what I am referring to for sure. But as Italy is a very small country and besides I don’t live there anymore and most of my audience is not even able to speak Italian, I want to share with the rest of the world this interesting case of “Image damage” of an influencer (the biggest one in Italy in this case) and what I would do if I was her.

Let’s start saying that Chiara Ferragni popularity is with no doubts a result of excellent use of the social media platforms. She is born in 1987 and moved her first steps into the fashon world as a model when she was only 16. Her journey to fame began in 2009 when she launched her fashion blog, “The Blonde Salad.” Initially, the blog documented her personal style, travels, and daily life, quickly gaining popularity for its relatable content and Chiara’s distinctive fashion sense. She was only very creative in posting all kind of outfits and being always authentic and spontanes.

As the fashion blogging landscape evolved, Chiara Ferragni’s platform transformed into a lifestyle empire. She became known for her collaborations with renowned fashion brands, showcasing her impeccable style and influencing fashion trends globally. Chiara’s innate ability to connect with her audience and her genuine approach to sharing her life contributed significantly to her rapid rise to popularity. She was always very smart in catching the trends and making them as she would participate into their success.

Her Follower base counts almost 30 Million Followers.

Her Target Audience has always been younger predominantly female fashion-lovers but with the time that range of followers expanded into an older audience, not gender specific and more generalist.

In 2022, during the Christmas season, Chiara Ferragni served as the spokesperson for Balocco, a renowned brand specializing in “Panettone,” a traditional Italian winter sweet. The promotional campaign centered around a charitable initiative linked to a special edition of this sweet, bearing Chiara Ferragni’s branding. The campaign pledged to allocate a portion of the sales proceeds to fund research for a specific type of cancer affecting children.

However, a year later, the Italian regulatory authority responsible for ensuring transparent communication and fair competition discovered discrepancies in the execution of the promised charity. Contrary to the communicated information, it was revealed that the anticipated donations had not proceed as outlined. Specifically, Balocco had made a singular donation of €30,000 to a hospital for disease research prior to the commencement of the campaign. Subsequently, neither the influencer, Chiara Ferragni, nor the company Balocco had followed through with any additional contributions following the sales of the branded sweets. Note that one of this Panettone costed more than twice the normal price with the argument, clearly written in the product packaging, that the sale would have help the hospital in this research.

Geographic

When she was a model she was pretty famous internationally as well. Her outfits were often taken in various magazine and other fashion endeavor as well as other international star. In her Blog she focused purely on fashion, trends on Italian Followers more than international after she got married with the singer Fedez, who clearly didn’t have any visibility outside his home country.

Her website https://www.theblondesalad.com/en/ lost 26% of traffic Share* in 2023 in United States where she detain the majority of the traffic. This is why I am saying:

Forget about Italy: move away and build your audience outside

Ok you screwed up.

Leaving the ethical aspect aside, which is in my opinion unforgivable, your target audience in your home country is lost or at least your sponsors are lost. There is no way to gain it back, because even if the fan base stay (and we should ask how many of them just stay in your channel as haters just to see you going down), the companies don’t want to sponsor any Influencers who might be attached to a negative image.

But outside Italy, no one really knows about all this right? This is one of the few advantages when you live in a country whose language is unknown outside of it. So why not start to build your audience back in other countries, focusing for example in the US? For sure the competition is higher over there and you are going to be “one of many” instead of being “the best” like right now, but hey at least you can growth and build your brand new.

Thematic

In this new trend of being “famous” for who they are and not what they do, she attracted other fans who didn’t really care about fashion, rather were more interested on the life of the couple and their initiatives. This of course made the couple very attractive for these kind of sponsor that might use them as “window” for their products. Basically they were acting as a living Truman Show where every moment of their lives was a good opportunity to showcase a brand / product. Ok, nothing wrong with that… It is only very dangerous.

In this new way of communicating, the influencer needed to find always something new to say, to keep people interested in the channels. And that is much more difficult if you don’t have any external inputs to use, like newest fashion trends, but you have to constantly make those input yourself. And even more difficult if you are basically a “typical” family with children living at the end a “normal” life. Normal meaning pretty standard, like going to the supermarkt, bringing your kids to school/Kindergarten and so on…

So what happen is that you want to find new things to say and at the same time find things that people is interest in. In a recent Podcast, the Communication Expert Matteo Flora correctly stated

“When a company finish things to say, they talk about charity”

And that is what happen with her. At that point, for her Italian “new” audience she had, she finished the things to say and started therefore to share charity and “good” voluntary actions to continue keep the attention and resonance around her.

Be aware, the pick of your search in Google happen only when there is a scandal involved…

Google trends Screenshot

Go back to the origins of being a Fashion / Stylist Star

Chiara, your popularity went hand in hand with your fashion skills. You have always been “ahead” of the trends and even inspired new ones, with a very particular characteristic: being the most recognized “feminine” , classy meanwhile stylistic and elegant fashion influencer.

You were the one against ballerina, all in favor of skinny again large, avoiding anything confortable large skirt or pants always favoring stretch and somehow minimalist and very detail oriented. Very Colorful outfit has always been a strong recognition in your brand image, use it. You should own this unique mixed “snobby” posh style and being more than ever everywhere (expect Italy) on social media talking / posting / sharing all about this fashion life.

Play with these topics and keywords in your channels well and improve/increase your content in english and your customers based will developed even stronger and quicker than before. But keep in mind…We are in a global network and the bad press might expand and be picked up by outlets abroad…And then it’s too late.

*Source: Semrush SEO Platform