Introduction

This is “What Just Happened?,” the podcast that looks at the biggest brand crises of our time, what they meant for organisational strategy and behaviour, and their lasting impact on our approach to crisis communication.

I’m Kate Hartley. And I’m Tamara Littleton. And together, we’ll delve into what happened, why it mattered, and whether it could happen again.

Episode 

Tamara Littleton: Welcome back to What Just Happened, and we wanted to do a little short on what’s been happening for the Lululemon versus Mumumelon, what’s been called a shameless dupe challenging Lululemon’s sustainable image. Kate, do you want to just give us a bit of a background on this?

Kate Hartley: It’s actually brilliant for anyone that hasn’t seen it. It is a brilliant campaign. So, it’s a campaign by a creative agency and a climate campaign group called Serious People, who’s working in partnership with Action Speaks Louder, which, again, is a campaign group, and Action Speaks Louder targets companies that have a gap, among other things, between what they say and what they do on climate change.

That, in itself, is a really interesting reason to look at this, I think. But also, obviously, companies that use a huge amount of power to power their operations and their supply chains, which is another interesting thing.

So Serious People, with Action Speaks Louder, has put out a video that shows them launching a pop-up shop in London called Mumumelon, an absolutely shameless rip-off of Lululemon.

It’s going to get very difficult for me to say these in a while, and it shows them having made, they’ve literally ripped off Lululemon’s designs. They’ve done it completely deliberately, totally provocatively. They’re doing it to show that they can create those designs but using less fossil fuel to do it, basically.

They do it in a way that’s better for the planet. So the video shows them going into this pop-up shop and showing these amazing designs, and customers coming into the shop and seeing the designs. Then they’re saying, “We’ve done this in order to be kind to the planet.”

The video starts with, “We stole Lululemon’s designs and made them less terrible for the environment.” I mean, it’s very, very deliberate, and they’re courting the lawyers. There’s one point where, I think it must be Ollie Frost, who’s the co-founder of the creative agency, I think it’s him in the video, I’m not sure, but he says in it, “Our lawyers would like us to call this parody, but I’d choose different words.”

So he’s literally deliberately provoking the lawyers. There’s a whole line saying they might sue, so bring on the Lulu lawyers. I mean, it’s a brilliant campaign. It’s all about violating copyright, not the planet, and it’s going to be really interesting to see what Lululemon does.

Because, I mean, if they sue them, they’re just going to be taken to the cleaners over this, aren’t they? I mean, it’s awful, just taunting them. There’s even a bit where they go into, because it’s only like five shops down from Lululemon itself, and he goes into the Lululemon shop and invites them for drinks at five o’clock.

TL: And also actually says, “We’re not trying to compete with you. We’re sort of trying to morally undercut you for rhetorical purposes.”

KH: Yeah, and it says, because they’ve only actually created 43 products and they’re not actually for sale. I mean, it’s not a real competitor. It’s literally just making a point. It said also in there, “We’re not trying to compete with Lululemon. We’re trying to embarrass them gently, in a friendly, encouraging way.”

So all the language is just really, really clever. Then there’s a list of things on its website that Lululemon could do in order to do better. It’s just absolutely fascinating, and it’s the new kind of activism to actually goad somebody.

Because I think Nestlé has had an issue with this, hasn’t there, with Greenpeace, where they sued, they tried to sue to take down stuff that was violating copyright years and years ago? That was to do with the KitKat.

TL: Yeah, in fact, one that we covered in a previous episode, and that was a big mistake that they made back at the time. Because, you know, the public will be supporting them, and it goes against anything that sort of legal action would do.

KH: Exactly, and sometimes taking that kind of action makes the whole thing much worse, doesn’t it, as we know, and that’s the Streisand effect, which I talk about. Do you know about the Streisand effect?

TL: Barbra Streisand?

KH: Barbra Streisand, yeah. So she’s had a whole thing named after her. So the Streisand effect is basically that one of the Californian government departments was recording how the coastline was eroding around the California coast, and Barbra Streisand happened to have her house included in one of the photographs.

They took hundreds of thousands of photographs, and one of those photographs included her house. She said that was a violation of privacy, so she took them to court and said, “You must take down the photographs.”

Now, before she did that, seven people or something had downloaded the photograph of her particular house, and about six of those were her lawyers, I think. After she brought that thing to court, 400,000 people downloaded the pictures of her house.

So what she’d done is just made people realise that there were pictures of her house available on the internet. That’s now known as the Streisand effect. So Lululemon’s got to be really careful not to make the same mistake.

TL: Basically, I think this is worth noting, that this is not just another sort of dupe. Slightly unpopular opinion, I really don’t like dupes. I get very, very frustrated, and I’m team Colin the Caterpillar, M&S, Colin the Caterpillar all the way against Aldi’s Cuthbert the Caterpillar.

I know that, in a similar way, they used the same sort of tactics, and they had a massive “Free Cuthbert” campaign using humour to get people to support them, even though I think it’s really unfair to rip off people’s trademarks and IP. But this is not really the same.

This is activists making a point, slightly forcing their hand. As you said, on the website there are various things that they feel Lululemon could do better. They also make a point that there’s a new CEO coming in, and that perhaps is the best time.

I mean, can you imagine, you’re just joining as the new CEO, what are you going to do? You can’t go in and sue them. It would be absolute suicide, not legal advice, but from a comms and reputation point of view, they really are going to have to embrace this and make some changes.

KH: I totally agree, and I think it’s really interesting you said that about the new CEO coming in, because maybe this is one of the things that organisations are going to have to prepare for when there’s a major personnel change.

Is this a catalyst for somebody to come in and try to persuade the new CEO, the new team in charge, to do things differently? That is a real opportunity for activism to come and say, right, there’s a chance here to get things changed.

So maybe that is one of the things that people should prepare for when there’s a CEO change. I think that’s really interesting.

TL: Yeah, well, we’ll have to see how this plays out. Maybe we can come back to it.

KH: Absolutely, I think we will. It’ll be fascinating to watch it.

Outro

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