Dolce & Gabbana
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/23/business/dg-in-china-intl/index.html
This article covers the recent controversy regarding Dolce & Gabbana’s ad. To promote for their upcoming (now cancelled) show in Shanghai, Dolce & Gabbana had made a series of videos for their Instagram account where in each video there is a Chinese model attempting to eat Italian foods with chopsticks. While the concept of the videos is already questionable and strange, the dialogue in the video provided reasons for further outrage with phrases like “is it too big for you?” (in reference to a Cannoli) and referring to chopsticks as a “small stick tool” while referring to Italian food with words like “great.” On top of that, the background of the video was made up of a messy array of stereotypical Chinese cultural symbols. The existence of social media allowed for the outrage surrounding these ads to spread rapidly and reach a large number of people.
In this case, the reaction to the ads demonstrate the concept of information cascades. With each person posting videos and pictures of their Dolce & Gabbana merchandise being trashed more and more people felt encouraged to join in and demonstrate their anti-D&G sentiments. The textbook covers reasons as to why people would be inclined to follow the behaviours of others as the behaviours of others can inform one’s valuing of something. In this case, the outrage in response to the ads made was given more purpose as the numbers grew and effectively started negatively impacting D&G’s sales noticeably. With videos of people burning and trashing D&G, the value of the merchandise also decreased as people were devaluing the items through rejecting them and treating them like trash. Ultimately with D&G’s inability to apologize and the fast spread of information, they had to cancel their show hours before it was scheduled, and suffered the consequences heavily with retailers removing D&G items.