In terms of gaining global free publicity, a five-day manhunt would not be the preferred means for mega brand awareness.
Despite that, Levi’s, Peak Design, Tommy Hilfiger, Monopoly and McDonald’s have been referenced repeatedly in news stories and social media posts about the search for Luigi Mangione and his subsequent arrest. He is the suspect in last week’s killing of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive officer Brian Thompson.
Before Mangione was taken into custody Monday, Peak Design’s founder and CEO Peter Dering contacted the New York Police Department tip line to share that Mangione appeared to have a gray Peak Design “Everyday” backpack on the day of the shooting. The New York Police Department found one matching that description in Central Park with a Tommy Hilfiger jacket and paper money from the board game Monopoly. Within days, the little-known Peak Design was becoming more widely known.
Dering declined to comment Tuesday about how the media attention has impacted sales and the company, as well as the precariousness of navigating such unsought publicity. Although Mangione’s backpack was reportedly purchased between 2016 and 2019, “Everyday” backpacks are still offered on Peak Design’s site for $299. After discovering during a four-month trip around the world that carrying a camera could be inconvenient, Dering launched Peak Design with a focus on functional, well-designed products in 2011.
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Dering declined to comment “for a wide variety of reasons” Tuesday. Media requests to spokespeople at Levi’s, Tommy Hilfiger and Hasbro, which owns Monopoly, were acknowledged but were not returned.
Crisis management specialist Evan Nierman of Red Banyan said Tuesday, “I tell people all the time that the flip side of a crisis is opportunity. Clearly, that is the case here — a little-known brand [Peak Design] gets thrust into the spotlight and people are purchasing items from them. Mind you, I’m sure their marketing team didn’t sit around and think, ‘We can sell more products, if we get attached to a murder on the streets of New York City that is a major national news item.”
Diana Rickard, a criminal justice professor at the City University of New York, said the fashion element of the case is what cultural criminologists call “whorls and spirals, where media affects crime, crime affects media and culture, and culture affects crime. What we see with Mangione is he has quickly become a folk hero and a fashion folk hero. It’s almost like the movie ‘The Joker,’ where people dressed like him.”
She expects the crossover between entertainment, reality and fashion to “absolutely” continue. “What’s concerning here is this is a criminal, who did something horrible,” said Rickard, adding that the health care crisis is also social media-driven. As the author of “The New True Crime: How Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence,” she expects the fashion impact to continue in different ways.
The public’s interest is measurable given that 84 percent of consumers, who are 13 or older, consume true crime through any medium — television, social media, YouTube or podcasts, based on Edison Research. In fact, nearly nine in 10 true crime podcast listeners said their opinion of brands improved or were unchanged because they advertised in true crime content, according to PodSurvey Study.
However, Dering’s proactive effort to help with the investigation shows that “his head and his heart were in the right place. Anyone, who attacks the brand for capitalizing on a tragedy, I don’t buy that at all,” Nierman said.
As for reports that Google has been taking down one-star reviews of the McDonald’s location, where Mangione was arrested Monday, Nierman said, “That’s shameful and embarrassing. But that also shows that people weaponize reviews online. We see this happen through our work in crisis management not just with big corporations but with small and medium-sized businesses, too. Someone will react to news, see it through their own lens, look to get involved in the story as an online activist with a review one way or the other,” he said.
While the murder will remain in the news, Neirman said “the fashion fiasco” has peaked and will taper off. While the manhunt is now part of Peak Design’s brand story, they should not be “rewarded nor penalized” for how they were brough into the public’s consciousness, according to Nierman. “They’re probably going to sell a lot of backpacks.”
And shoppers will be able to find a Peak Design store in Los Angeles, with one in the works there for early next year.
