A Simple Tale

For as long as I have known her Queen Marie has been a huge fan of the footwear brand Simple. She has written about them on here and she wears her Simple sneakers until they fall apart. Simple emailed us asking us if they could send us some Simple footwear. Not my cup of tea so I said no thank you, but Queen Marie was most excited, imagining lovely new Simple shoes to write about.

Here's how we expected it to play out: Simple send shoes, Queen Marie takes photos of herself wearing shoes frolicking in the woods, Queen Marie posts about shoes and you read post. Simple, right? Wrong. What actually happened is that Simple send her a shoe. That's correct. One shoe. If you want to get really technical, they send her one shoe...and a shoe belonging to another blogger. Do two odd shoes constitute a pair?

There is a note which accompanies this 'pair' which, from what I can understand from my phone call to Queen Marie, instructs her to Tweet about having a shoe belonging to someone else, and hopefully the person who fits the shoe will read the Tweet and presumably say "oooh that's my shoe!". Apparently this is all designed to encourage the bloggers to meet up, have coffee...and swap shoes. We have a problem - we don't tweet. We don't read tweets. Tweeting is of zero interest to us. Second problem, we live in Glasgow - what are the chances of the other blogger also living in Glasgow? Zero. You couldn't make this up!

So let's just make this Simple shall we? Style High Club, you have Queen Marie's shoe, could you please email her and send her her shoe, and she will endevour to find out who's shoe she has and will post it to them? I even have someone's bloody shoe and I didn't even want them! So I have some poor sod's shoe - Pinwheel Black Size 5, so if this is your shoe let us know and I'll post it. If you are the owner of the Bison size 5 (my shoe apparently), let me know and you can even have my other shoe, thus scooping two pairs for yourself.

Queen Marie is slightly overwhelmed by this and actually truly loves Simple and wants her shoes and wants everybody else to have their shoes. I just hate convoluted marketing ploys.

Queen Michelle

Edit: Style High Club, a kind person in the comments tells me that you have a Pinwheel shoe too! Well, I have the other, so email me your address and I'll send you it.

Edit: OK via a 'clue' on Twitter, a reader has told us that Style High Club does not have Queen Marie's shoe, but Style PA does. Could this farce get any more ridiculous?? I think not.

Comments

[Rach]

This sounds like a case of not having a clue how a blogging community works and trying to exploit it as a cheap marketing technique. The result is a real old mess and egg in the face. I hope Queen Marie gets her shoe. x

[KD]

Good luck! Sounds like you'll need it.

[Alex]

The irony of the brand being called Simple!

[the coveted mag]

I did marketing at uni and I dont understand why on earth a brand would put this into motion as there are too many problems with it. I agree with Rach...it feels like someone in the marketing dep has only just heard about blogs, and doesn't fully understand how they work yet. They should realise that just sending you a complete pair to try on and blog about would be far more beneficial to them than this gobbledegook.

*rolls eyes*

[dust]

Ha, ha, ha, never a dull day in Kingdom..

[littlemissellie]

That's ridiculous! Can't believe they didn't foresee this happening, which is surely not the best type of publicity?

[Louise]

ha ha ha sounds like a cock-up of epic proportions! Someone in marketing looks very stupid right now. Hope Queen Marie does actually get her shoes though, thus making it alright x

[Emma - Magpie Sparkles blog]

haha that is fabulously rubbish!
xx

[Suzanne aka Punk Glam Queen]

I guess the brainiac that thought up this ploy didn't take into consideration geographical location. What a crazy waste of energy! I hope Queen Marie gets her other shoe!
XXX
Suzanne

[Clare]

Style High Club has the Pinwheel in black too, just so you know! x

[JJ]

what a fucking trainwreck of a marketing strategy O_o

[sarah]

This sounds really stupid. A bit rude even.
Simple PR peeps ought to feel ashamed for creating this mess.
I hope you manage to resolve this issue & have a great weekend
xo from Paris

[Moda]

I'm with Alex. And I can just hear the pitch for this crap marketing ploy. Unbelievable.

[moi]

Somebody badly needs shot for that...hahaha...I think I might go into blogging, all these bloody freebies!!! Maybe if I add a music section I'll never have to purchase on itunes again! I'll throw in some discussion on toiletries and male (maybe female) beauty products...suggest my favourite meals and where I chose to wine/dine, club and drink- discuss awesome cars and who I love to fly with (Quatar airways ;)) ...then I will know what it's like to lead the life of Sting!!!!

[moi]

P.S. 'fuck simple...in the dimple' - that should be their new slogan...reverse psychology and to avoid embarrassment surrounding their 'online social escapade'...

[Louise]

Moi - have Qatar airways rung you up with your free year's travel card yet?

[Celia]

Laaaaaaame. Wow. If they'd bothered to do any research, say, like read the blog a little, they would've known this! Idiotic. I could see this working in a major city like New York, where there's a high concentration of fashion bloggers, but GEEZ LOUISE, could they not have done a cursory poking around in KoS to just see that you guys don't tweet?

Christ on a stick, that is weak.

My younger sis loves Simple shoes too, wait 'til I tell her about this and her face'll drop.

[Mademoiselle Robot]

I was contacted by them as well, haven't yet received my one shoe... I am really sick to death of "clever" marketing tricks. I don't have time to do all that shit, I am happy to feature stuff if I like it but I don't want to do a whole performance around it. Especially if it is forced upon me.
Simple my butt.
I hope Marie gets her shoes and everyone else for that matter!

x

[Lottie]

i got this too. a little annoyed about this stupid swapping crap. urgh ffs.

[moi]

Unfortuantely not Louise... although I did manage to swaggle massive discount on my iphone by threatening 02 I'd leave for Orange...haha.

[Stella Mayfair]

that's f*cking ridiculous!

[Macala Wright]

Wow, just wow. Talk about complication. Another case of social marketing gone wrong - I feel a great fashion marketing case study coming again!

[Natalie]

Wow, what a way for a marketing stunt to backfire! I'm a huge fan of Twitter, but not everyone is - I really think it's awful for PR people and marketers to shoehorn bloggers into one stereotype because we all have vastly different styles, and preferred platforms!

I hope Queen Marie can get ahold of her shoes, I adore her wood frolicking pictures!

[frances]

what a very, very odd plan. badly thought out, but mostly odd. x

[Seb]

Hi Queen Michelle

We're sorry that you don't like what we've done with the Simple campaign. We apologise for any misunderstanding.

We thought we could do something a bit different, and help connect people who might not have known each other beforehand. We tried to make the experience as hassle-free as possible (by using Send Social and offering to facilitate swapping the shoes).

We were really delighted that you wished to receive a pair of Simple shoes, but we totally understand that you don't wish to take part. We really value your feedback and have taken on board everything that you've said. We'll be in touch via email to try and makes things better.

Regards,

Seb [Account Director, we are social]

[TP]

What a FAIL by Simple.
And a waste of everyones time trying to reunite their shoes (and at their own cost).

[Queen Marie]

To be fair TP, Simple are covering the cost of the reuniting by using a new service called sendsocial. Once I get my head round it, I think I may decide it is a very useful service. Watch this space...
x

[Clare]

ohh this is my first comment, but I always read your blog and love it. But this post is just too funny, ridiculous, and tragic. In fact, you should write a Shakespearean play about it.

Good luck with the shoes. That is just too cruel and short sighted of the company to think this would work!