Balenciaga Partners with National Children's Alliance after their Ad Controversy
Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris via The Hollywood Reporter
Luxury brand Balenciaga announced that they will be partnering with the National Children's Alliance after their ad controversy back in December of last year. This is their latest attempt to fix damaged public perception and gain consumer trust again. With this partnership, Balenciaga will support the NCA in a three year program that includes the training of 2,000 people who specialize in child abuse. They will also help 55,000 children by providing mental health resources and attention in the program.
The program will focus on three pillars: supporting the NCA’s Mental Health Institute, educate Balenciaga on child protection and promoting children’s wellbeing and raise public awareness on child abuse, trauma and protection.
Photo: Anton Corbjin via Vogue
It is obvious that this campaign made people not want to support Balenciaga as a brand, which means that it likely affected their sales negatively (if it hasn’t already) in addition to their perception to the public. Just last week, Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia has since spoken out about the ad in his first public interview since the controversy, “I realize that my work has been seen as provocative, but this specific situation would never be part of my, you know, provocative nature,” he said. “That was the most difficult thing for me personally: How could I not see [the problem]? Because it is so clear to me now that it was the wrong thing to do.”
Photo: Creative Lab via Entrepreneur
It is clear that this controversy was bad for Balenciaga as a brand so this year is going to be their year to try to clean up and redeem themselves. In addition to this partnership, it is rumored that the brand will also present a collection for Paris Fashion Week next month. In due time, we will see if the public is quick to forgive Balenciaga for their controversies. With this partnership and their new upcoming collection we can only beg the question: will this partnership and collection really work in the brand’s favor or will they just be another terrible call from the brand?
