Why such a simple thing like writing a blog post can make or break your business PR-wise?

Popular Polish e-shop for shoes, Eobuwie, has had a major PR crisis recently because of a small copywriting mistake on their blog posts.

It faced huge criticism after using the phrase "ideology LGBT" in one of their blog posts.

Twitter users made the case public. As a result, the brand had to apologise and remove the blog post in question.

And here is the full story. 

In Sept 2019 (!), an article appeared on their blog describing what the selected shoelace colours meant. 

While describing pink, the author used the phrase "ideology LGBT". 

"Pink laces in Glans (shoes’ type) may or may not indicate the homosexual orientation of the person wearing them. Nowadays, it can also be an expression of support for LGBT ideology "- you could read on the blog.

 On July 9, 2020, the matter was discovered and publicised by Twitter users.

One of the Internet users reported that the brand did not respond to messages and emails on this topic and encouraged publicising the matter by using the hashtag.

After a few hours, the #eobuwieisoverparty hashtag became one of the most popular in Poland!

The topic has gained more recent popularity, thanks to presidential candidate, Andrzej Duda, when during a meeting in Brzeg, he scandalously called the LGBT community an "ideology" and compared it to communism.

 "Well, this is probably a joke," "what ideology are these people," "I wonder if it's worth shopping with them," wrote dissatisfied users on Twitter...

 After a wave of criticism, Eobuwie finally decided to publish a statement regarding the issue.

 According to the brand, the text was supposed to be neutral, but due to "unfortunate wording it could be received negatively". "We removed the text from the Eobuwie blog. We can assure you that this situation has meant that the blog editors will choose their words even more carefully in the future, so that the content on the site leaves no doubt that respect for other people is one of the key values that guide our daily work "- we read in a statement.

 Your copywriter should get a significant raise, right?

The above case study was based on an article published on Proto.pl, the biggest Polish site on PR.