Chanel's Advent calendar was a TikTok sensation that started to blow up in December. The calendar was released in October but once December came around and people started opening their $825 purchase, they were not pleasantly surprised. I become intrigued with the drama when I discovered that Chanel was blatantly ignoring the millions of outraged customers and onlookers.
In the article posted by Insider, "Chanel says it will be 'much more cautious' with products in the future after its $825 advent calendar was criticized on TikTok", they stated that Chanel's calendar left people baffled at the products they bought. From free items to tiny testers, the calendar left everyone disappointed.
Chanel is luxury brand, and being a high-quality brand, made people raise their expectations of what would be in the calendar. That and the hefty price tag. The calendar was released to celebrate the 100th anniversary of their perfume and it was the first time they ever released something like it. They ducted blame by stating consumers could see all the items inside before purchasing. As others have pointed out, many bought them instore to keep its content a surprise. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be surprised if this is also their last year to release a calendar again. When people started opening their calendars and found things like cheap jewelry, stickers, and dust bags, which are normally given to you for free with a purchase, people were outraged.
Customers took to the internet to share with others their experience and even tried to contact Chanel for an explanation. TikToks went viral and Chanel began to receive a lot of negative comments on their Instagram page. Even then, Chanel didn't say anything to news outlets or their consumers for another week. Once they did finally respond to news pages, they really didn't apologize. A statement they gave to Insider says, "Evidently, we see that you have to be careful and therefore, in future, we will certainly be much more cautious." Thankfully their response seemed genuine and if they do choose to do this again hopefully, they learned their lesson and will give products that match the price point set.
If I was their crisis manager, I would have immediately posted an apology and explanation. The fact that it took so long to respond leads me to believe that many people will be dropping Chanel as one of their favorite brands. I also would make sure that my apology was genuine and not place blame on the customers, especially given the circumstances, like it being a Christmas advent calendar. In the future, Chanel should ensure their apt to respond to outrages like this.
Chanel is still trying to do damage control about this incident. Even with all of the outrage by customers, they still state that it's a valuable collector's item which could be debatable. Overall, they did a good job about having a unique packaging but without valuable contents, can it really be called a collector's item? For $825, customers got poor products and only received 3 full sized items. There was one full sized perfume, nail polish, and a single lipstick. Other than that, they had miniature products and jewelry that seemed to cost less than $0.50 to make. Moving forward, Chanel desperately needs to sell a product that's worth their cost.
Examples of Chanel's Instagram in December
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