In November 2019, BarkBox, a monthly subscription service for dogs delivering toys, treats, and other goodies, released an innocent plush version of Thanksgiving dinner meals, including innocent-looking plush pigs-in-a-blanket toys, or so they thought.
The company thought the toy was a cocktail hotdog with a pig snout at one end and a pig butt at the other end. Internet users thought otherwise. Prepared to face backlash from animal rights activists for depicting a whole pig rolled up and cooked, the team instead faced a different dilemma: Internet users thought the toy looked like an adult entertainment toy and began making fun of the company.
BarkBox and its parent company, BARK, had three possible strategies to implement:
Go on the offensive and attack those making jokes about the company and the toy,
Deny the crisis, or
Ignore it altogether.
However, its mission to have fun and make dogs happy motivated the media team to abandon any of those options and have fun with the situation. The first to be alerted to the jokes and reactions of people on the Internet was Alexis Nelson, the head of social media marketing at BarkBox.
Once the team stopped laughing, they jumped in and responded to the more than 17,000 comments on the initial ad. The advertisement exploded the next day. Screenshots of the responses went viral.
The toy even sold out. BARK had to drain its Black Friday backstock to keep up with the surge in demand. Online, the original advertisement was gaining traction: it had over 18,000 comments and 6,900 shares.
Nearly 30 pieces of press discussed how BarkBox handled the crisis. The recap article on BarkPost, the company's blog, got over 110,000 unique visits in less than 48 hours.
BarkBox rebuilt its brand relationship through this Diversionary Response Strategy. It gave the public what it wanted and offered a concession. It was mutually beneficial for BarkBox to embrace the puns and double entendres to make fun of itself while also taking responsibility for the design. This strategy diminished the severity of the crisis, improved the reputation of BarkBox, and increased its organizational impression.
Crises serve as learning moments, and this served as the aha-moment for BARK to rethink its content strategy, a vital component of brand and awareness marketing. One new creation is called "Drops," which refers to the collaboration between social, toy design, and marketing to develop products with powerful stories and turn regular dog toys into explosive moments of public relations, social, and customer commentary.
A prime example is the 4/20 collection from 2020, which resulted in the best two-day sale for the company, even beating its previous Black Friday sales almost threefold.
Public relations personnel must prepare for negative reactions, but embracing an accidental crisis within limits, can prove beneficial for a company if it uses an authentic voice to connect to its audience.