Crisis Strategy Brief: Dote Finds Itself In Hot Water

Outside of major companies and figures, one platform I like to explore is YouTube. I find a lot of interesting scandals happen among social media influencers and I think it’s something crisis communications professionals can learn. So, when I came across the Dote scandal, I found an interesting takeaway for this crisis strategy brief.

Description Of The Crisis

A few YouTubers have alluded to the idea that the Dote brand trips were less than savory for women of color. Some claims that have been made have included girls being segregated by color and women feeling slighted while at a different Dote-sponsored brand trip. Multiple videos were made by different YouTube channels on the matter.

Get more information here: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tanyachen/youtubers-accusing-fashion-brand-dote-of-segregating

Dote’s PR Response

Dote released a statement on Instagram and also spoke to Buzzfeed News. In their statement, they affirmed that they heard the outcry and are working on doing better.

My Recommendations

I think it’s really great that Dote mentioned that they’re going to be working on doing better. Although, they haven’t mentioned if the claims were true or intentional or what overall happened, this was very good to put in the statement. However, I didn’t see an apology but I could be wrong. With crisis communications, it’s very important to include an apology, especially if someone is offended. One person could be offended or a mass amount of people could be offended, yet, it’s still very important for brands to make an apology.

Going forward, I think it would be a good idea for Dote to speak with the minority women and make a personal apology to them. If this wasn’t intentional, it still shows a good image to apologize to them. It would be even better for Dote to work exclusively with these girls. I say this because it could show good faith and could better improve a key message for the brand. This key message being either or both that this was a mistake or “we’re sorry”. When all of this gained traction, this is just a brief bit of what I would’ve done to calm down the crisis.

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Photo by Renata Fraga on Unsplash