September 9th, 2009
Social Media Wars at Mr Vintage
For Release: Immediately
Mr Vintage, New Zealand’s leading t-shirt brand, is creating controversy again. This time, they are harnessing the power
of social media.
The company noticed that an Australian t-shirt company, Klub Retro, had plagiarized a large portion of the Mr Vintage
website in August 2009.
Rather than taking legal action against the Australian brand, Mr Vintage has decided to get their 7,800 Facebook fans
and 1,800 Twitter followers into action against the competitor.
The company placed a blog post on their Facebook page at 11am on the morning of September 9th that detailed the
plagiarism, and within an hour they had over 100 responses from people tweeting, posting, emailing and calling the
company.
Fans of the Mr Vintage brand are being encouraged to email their negative responses directly to the Klub Retro company.
In response to the social media war that has erupted, Klub Retro is biting back with their own social media resources.
The company has tongue-in-cheek thanked Mr Vintage for the free publicity on their website’s blog.
The company has adopted an extensive social media marketing plan in 2009, predominantly through Facebook and Twitter.
Not only is the brand finding this significantly cheaper, but it is also an effective way to communicate directly with
their key consumers.
The company realized the potential of social media marketing when they engaged in the services of Spreadit, a new
company that offers viral competitions through relevant social networking sites.
The results were instantly noticeable. In the two days that Mr Vintage ran the competition, the number of fans and
followers jumped from 3,000 to 9,000, and Mr Vintage also became the 5th most talked about topic on Twitter, behind the
Michael Jackson memorial, Google and CNN.
With over 10,000 fans and followers on the social networking websites, Mr Vintage keep their supporters active by
posting daily competitions and offering fans exclusive information of new t-shirt launches.
However, while the company founder Robert Ewan is passionate about E-commerce, he says that there are still customers
that want to try on the garments and buy them in-store. With the opportunity for customers to do this in the new Great
North Road location, Ewan hopes to expand the brand further.
Mr Vintage prides itself in being New Zealand's premium online t-shirt brand, stocking Australasia’s best range of
authentic 80's themed and pop culture clothing.
ends