What can Fashion influencers and brands learn from Sondos Al-Qattan Instagram post

What can Fashion influencers and brands learn from Sondos Al-Qattan Instagram post

Recently social media was abuzz with the controversy surrounding kuwaiti influencer Sondos Al-Qattan and her comments regarding Kuwait rules on Filipino domestic workers.

Why everyone is so upset about the comment that she made

The problem began in July 10 when she posted a video. She basically said that she doesn’t like the new kuwaiti regulations about Philipinos domestic workers. In her video she said personally she doesn’t think they should get one day off a week, and she disagrees with the policy that the worker can retain their own passport because they they will run off with the passport and leave.

Here’s what she said:

“Honestly, I disagree with the law. I don’t want a Filipino maid anymore. Nut how can you have a ‘servant’ in your house who gets to keep their passport with them? If they ran away and went back to their country who will refund me? And what’s worse is they have one day off every week.”

That caused quite a bit of stir but it probably would have gone away if she hadn’t reiterated her comments over and over again at least three times. She said she didn’t understand why everyone was attacking those comments. She went on to say she thought it was an attack on Kuwait and on the Gulf as a whole. So it just got worse and worse from a PR perspective over the week. A back drop to all this is that Kuiwat changed the rules recently after the diplomatic spat that happened following the murder of the Filipino domestic workers in Kuwait.

There was a top level spat between the Philippines and Kuwait. At one point they were even offering to fly all the Filipinos home for free from Kuwait. This is what led to these rule changes, which led to these complaints from Sondos Al-Qattan.

“SUCH BEHAVIOUR DOES NOT REPRESENT OUR BRAND” SAID ONE BRAND SPOKESPERSON

The influencer Sondos Al-Qattan gets paid to advertise  brands and these brands aren’t very happy. Quite a few of the brands have dropped or severed ties with her. Some of them did so right away, some of them took a little longer and people were starting to wonder why. Because it became an international story so people were getting in touch with these brands at their main offices in countries like the UK and the US.

Chelsea Boutique which is based in London for one, for example said that they believe that decent working condition should be provided to everyone and such behaviour doesn’t represent the brand’s core beliefs. Similar versions of that statement went out by a lot of brands.

But the brands that are a bit slow or still haven’t responded to what happene, they’re getting a lot of heat on social media from their own customer which is interesting because it shows how much power the customer has on social media. Which leads to the next question which is what influencers and brands can learn from this episode.

A lesson to learn is that a brand never really knows what an influencer will do or what their personality is. Therefore it’s in their best interest, before they start funnelling resources into personality marketing, to really be careful about who they work with because you don’t want to be in an embarrassing spot where you have to sever ties with someone that you’ve been working with.

This is something that’s happened quite frequently but it has taken some time for companies to get a hold of it and understand it. The other thing is that very often in social media and the internet in general, these stories grow legs and can run away to where ever. Brands now have to be ready to have a response as soon as a situation like Sondos Al-Qattan Social Media comment arises. Not responding is not a way to deal with this because any kind of news – good news, bad news, travels very fast on these social platforms. As a brand actively present on social media, you have got to be on top of things. As an example, in this particular case, the brands that were a bit slow like Mac cosmetics had to face the embarrassment of their customers asking them why they haven’t severed ties with Miss Ai-Qattan. The comments came flooding in “are you going to support this?”, “why haven’t you said anything yet?”, and on it went.

These are some of the comments made by brands:

Max Factor said it would suspend all work with the make-up artist.

“Max Factor Arabia was shocked by the comments made…regarding the new labor law in Kuwait,”. Max Factor Arabia is taking this incident very seriously and have immediately suspended all collaborations with Sondos.” -Max Factor Arabia spokesperson.

We believe that decent working conditions should be provided to everyone and such behaviour does not represent our brand’s core belief.” the company posted on Twitter.

A spokesman for French perfume brand M Micallef said his company was “shocked” by Ms Alqattan’s comments and would end their relationship.

Ms Al-Qattan defended her remarks in another video. “What do human rights have to do with (the worker) keeping her passport? Even our kids don’t hold on to their passport,” she said.

Sondos Al-qattan has an official statement in her instagram.

“DON’T JUDGE A PERSON WITHOUT FULL UNDERSTANDING OF THE SITUATION. JUST BECAUSE YOU DON’T AGREE, DOESN’T MEAN THAT YOU’RE RIGHT! “,SONDOS_AQ

Conclusion: What can be learnt from Sondos Al-Qattan Social Media Disaster

After reading her statement I discussed it briefly with a friend and came to my own conclusion. It is this, I agree with her that you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s colour, and secondly I agree with her only when you meet her up close and personal can you make a personal judgment about whether she is also beautiful on the inside. Posts in Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and all the rest of social platforms are not adequate enough to help you make that judgement. However I think some contents are best kept private or at least share only with people who understand the situation you’re talking about and the circumstances surrounding it.

I PASSIONATELY CONDEMNED THE VIDEO ON ALL LEVELS ESPECIALLY THE STATEMENT ABOUT DAY OFF. COME ON!!! EVERYBODY DESERVES A DAY OFF

When I discussed this with a friend I passionately condemned the video on all levels especially the statement about day off. Come on!!! Everybody deserves a day off, and not a day off under your watchful eyes, but a day off-off, completely off, to do as they please. It’s called freedom! Then over the cause of our discussion I realised that perhaps I don’t have all the information in front of me, so while I may disagree with the video content, i can not claim to know whether or not the creator of the video content is a good or bad person. And this is the problem with social media. Everybody has an opinion. Gee!!! It’s a world of rating, commenting, voting, thumping up and thumping down, following and unfollowing, subbing and unsubbing, and yes let’s not forget the all important I will Block You option. We forget that a person is much more colourful than the pictures we see in their feeds. Therefore for all influencers and brands a lesson to learn is to be vigilant with posts and activities online. To remember that the internet world although an emulation of the real world, is by no means the real world. Things grow legs once you’ve hit that Send button.