Endear: Brand Throws Shade At Customer, Then Suggests Sale

Online fashion is a competitive industry.
These days it seems like everywhere you look there's an ad or a link to a new E-commerce shop that just popped up. And really its no surprise. At a day in age when most of us spend the majority of our time online anyway, it makes sense to bring the market where the money is and set up shop in a cost-effective way. Anybody and everybody has a chance to turn their products into something to make a living out of. And nearly everybody is trying. Because of this, brands have to do whatever they can to get attention and make themselves stand out with every post and customer interaction.

So maybe that is what Jac Vanek thought they were doing when they called out a customer on Instagram this morning, reposting a picture (since removed) of the well-known Youtuber, Marzia Bisognin, and claiming the dress she was wearing was a knock-off of their shirt, then suggesting she buy the real thing instead. While contacting a customer (well-known or not) privately and encouraging them to purchase and wear your product instead could have potentially had positive ramifications, publicly posting a picture of a much-loved vlogger with the attached message did not.

Jac Vanek was born from the music scene and named after its founder. It definitely embodies pop-culture, but Vanek's claim that "my brand is a fusion of my own personal expression" (as cited from the story section of her website) is a bit of a stretch. Like the expression featured on the dress in the picture above, most of the sayings on Vanek's products are unfortunately far from original, and remind us continuously of posts spawned from 14- year-old tumblr users that have already been circling the internet for months.

Even so, Vanek's obvious success and growing following proves that she is an intelligent business woman. And while its normally a good strategy to tie something you're promoting to someone who gets more attention than you (Marzia has well over 3 1/2 million subscribers), doing so in a negative way won't bring you the results you want. Especially when done in such a public way. Although Marzia didn't even seem to notice the stunt (she's probably too busy being adorable and loving her new dress) many of Jac Vanek's fans threw shade back at the brand for the negativity of the caption, causing them to take it down not long after it was posted.

Have you ever experienced a brand using negative marketing tactics? Share your stories in the comments below.