What I honestly think about ‘you’

This week Chiara Ferragni, Italy’s best-known influencer and digital entrepreneur, involved in a crisis that erupted in December and dubbed #PandoroGate, was a guest on the well-known Italian television show Che Tempo Che Fa. There was great anticipation surrounding this appearance.

What happened?

To understand the sequence of events in the crisis and the initial response she provided, I invite you to read this previous article. In brief, however, the initial response phase was marked by several errors:

• The absence of anticipatory logic (Ferragni and her companies were aware of the facts at least since July 2023).
• Lack of timeliness (the “apology video” arrived 3 days after the crisis erupted).
• Failure to recognize the real problem: deceiving people into believing they were contributing to charitable initiatives through their purchases and presenting herself as a supporter of such initiatives when she was actually paid just like any other product endorsement.
• Failure to acknowledge the stakeholders involved: from the betrayed consumer to the charities and individuals genuinely dedicated to charity, to the commercial partners who thought they were enhancing, not damaging, their reputational capital by collaborating with her.
• And the proposal of an unbelievable and unsustainable counter-narrative. She had labeled it all a “communication error” and had not anticipated that similar behavioral patterns would soon emerge for the Easter eggs in collaboration with DolciPreziosi and the anti-cyberbullying doll by Trudi.

In recent months, some brands, including Safilo, Coca-Cola, and Pigna, have terminated their collaboration with Ferragni and her companies; the crisis has not subsided; it has gained international relevance and has encompassed other dimensions within it (bringing attention, for example, to the activities of the entire influencer category). Furthermore, Italian politics has become more involved, with the Ddl Ferragni, which Chiara Ferragni herself commented on, saying she was pleased that the government had filled a legislative void thanks to which, from now on, everything will be more transparent. As if we should thank her and downplay her responsibility regarding the accusations leveled against her.

Regarding the management of her social media channels, Ferragni first disabled and then limited comments on posts, although in Instagram stories, she thanked her followers for the warmth and support she was receiving, offering us exclusively stories of her children and dog for weeks.

On February 22, 2024, the news broke that Fedez – a public figure, rapper, and Chiara Ferragni’s husband – had left the house they lived in. But that wasn’t the only information circulating that day. It was already announced that Chiara Ferragni would be a guest on Fabio Fazio’s television show Che Tempo Che Fa on March 3, 2024.

On February 24, an interview with Chiara Ferragni by Giuseppe Guastella and Candida Morvillo was published in Corriere della Sera. In the interview, which unfolds like a script of a TV series inspired by a romance novel – “Silence. Pause,” “again, head held high,” “Chiara, for a moment, looks at the tips of her shoes,” “suffering was evident in her,” and so on – some topics were touched upon. The messages chosen in the interview are the same as those reiterated the evening of March 3, 2024.

Following the publication of the interview in Corriere, Chiara Ferragni posted stories on her Instagram account showing the high number of views and clicks to underline her ability to still attract thousands of people. And this is surely true. However, the demonstration of interest (clicks, views, and shares) does not equate to approval and forgiveness.

Her appearance on Che Tempo Che Fa, along with the Corriere interview, leaves me somewhat perplexed. When constructing a crisis communication strategy, perceptions must be assessed, and understanding how to influence them, what image one wants to project of oneself and one’s role in the crisis. In both instances, the theme of privacy was brought up, with the desire to keep what is happening with her marriage “within the family walls.” Understandable and commendable, if it weren’t for the lack of the same attention to privacy, for example, of her children, often shown, even in moments of intimacy.

Furthermore, both were celebratory interventions. They evoked the young Chiara, with dreams she managed to fulfill, finding herself managing a success bigger than herself. “We weren’t structured enough. We are all young, mainly under 40. The world in which I operate was born with us, and we had the very naïve presumption of doing a job that, previously, didn’t exist and which has reached turnover figures typical of medium-sized businesses. Perhaps we weren’t even mentally prepared,” she says. A justification that betrays legitimate expectations about the control, quality, and reliability of her work, and her ability to respond to critical events, especially from the brands that intertwine their image with hers, hoping to benefit from it.

In the live television broadcast, one of the narrative threads was that of sincerity. Chiara Ferragni put forward the narrative that it was a “communication error” – when from the email exchanges we know that Balocco had anticipated the risk of engaging in misleading advertising – and reiterated that she had discovered the case on December 15, and not in July 2023, as we know from reading the measure. Sincerity was lacking, once again, and it was a missed opportunity to show greater awareness of what happened and why she was severely criticized.

In several instances, she reiterated that she was misunderstood. The communication error, therefore, lies with the message recipients and not with the sender. Further lack of accountably, which she connected to the polarization of possible opinions by dividing people into haters, who will never understand her, and lovers, who have known her for a long time and are able to interpret and understand her. Intermediate opinions and positions, which surely correspond to a slice of her followers, including myself, were not considered. Her strategy, therefore, aimed to mobilize the lovers, to activate them. In fact, she continues to reshare all the stories of those who were moved and support her on her social profiles.

Is this a sustainable strategy? What impact does it have on commercial partners, other brands, and people who have followed the developments critically? If a person had felt fooled since the crisis erupted, what has changed? If a brand were suspending judgment awaiting a demonstration of reliability, what would the statements in the live broadcast have shifted? The aggravating factor, in my opinion, is that perhaps we have had further confirmation that Chiara Ferragni considers her followers gullible and uninformed. And this, as far as I’m concerned, reveals much more about her than about the people who follow her, who may indeed not be accurately informed about all the facts.

Another dichotomous view she proposed was between the real world and the virtual world, arguing that, on the one hand, we don’t really know her because she only shows us part of her life; on the other hand, people “on the street” continue to appreciate her, unlike online haters. Here too, a simplification and distortion of the complexity of possible thoughts.

Finally, the search for an empathic reaction. Conveyed by the Instagram stories of these days and favored by the staging, during the broadcast, of video clips of her marriage in crisis and covers of magazines with her husband – which, in a unilaterally agreed format, would have been a violent and tasteless choice – in addition to the attitude of being naive but good-hearted. In one word: victimhood. References to previous charitable initiatives, attention to mental health, and mindfulness have been instrumentalized.

The live broadcast was a missed opportunity to propose an honest and sustainable narrative for all stakeholders and audiences. Chiara Ferragni has become entangled in her initial narrative, making it impossible for her to develop future personalized communications, for every category of stakeholder, but coherent. And this, in terms of crisis management, is a significant problem.