False Advertising or a Real-Life Scam? Australian “Crumbl Gate” Rocks TikTok
How far can false advertising go before it becomes an actual scam? American dessert chain Crumbl Cookies has found themselves in the middle of a scandal that, honestly, isn’t even their fault.
via @crumblsydney
Hundreds of Australians lined up in Sydney on September 29 for what they thought was a one-day-only Crumbl Pop-up, as advertised on TikTok by the handle @crumblsydney. To the average person, there wouldn't have been anything alarming about this - the account was posting videos counting down to the “launch” of Crumbl in Australia, legit cookies and branding were shown in their posts, and to make matters worse, they were taking content directly from the official @crumblcookies Instagram account to make their page look more credible.
In reality, this pop-up had nothing to do with Crumbl Cookies. Like, at all.
Apparently, the team behind this pop-up they flew to Hawaii and brought 840 cookies back in order to hold their pop-up event, days later. From paying $17.50 per single cookie (when a real Crumbl cookie costs approximately $5 USD), to some of the baked goods tasting stale, alarm bells started to ring as users across TikTok began realizing that something was off. Their team stated, “We never claimed to be an official Crumbl store. This was clearly stated in [our] bio and our comments,” which to no ones surprise, isn’t entirely true - the account only updated their bio to “Not endorsed by Crumbl, just fans importing!” once they realized they were under fire.
The team has recently put out a statement in their bio (through a Google Doc link, what a… choice), essentially not taking blame for what they’ve done and not acknowledging how, as a temporary business, they should not have been operating and marketing themselves the way they did. They even outlined their profit versus costs to justify the trouble they went through to “bring the cookies to Crumbl fans”, stating $4K was spent on flights, $6K on cookies and packaging, $2K in duties/customs, and $1K in staffing.
Now let’s take a look into how, as a “business”, Crumbl Sydney might be in hot water:
While they’re choosing the route of saying they never claimed to be the “official Crumbl,” through their content and use of language in social posts, it was obvious that they were, at the least, implying they were associated with the real Crumbl.
Through a quick copyright search, we can see that the logos are trademarked to Crumbl IP, LLC - even though they were selling them in their original packaging, they are selling for their own profit with Crumbl branding. The team’s defence is that they did not use the trademarks in their TikTok videos, which is still misleading for the general public due to the branded packaging shown in videos.
They claimed their act of reselling was legally safe under Australia’s “parallel imports” policy but have also publicly stated that they did not obtain permission from Crumbl to host the event.
Out of the 41 (now deleted) TikToks on their page, only a total of 4 videos had any mention of the cookies being picked up in the US - and we know that when something pops up on your FYP, you don’t always see every video from that account unless you go looking for it.
According to TikToker and Lawyer Roxanne Hart, Crumbl could technically be entitled to some damages done to their brand through this stunt.
As stated in Crumbl Cookies’ online terms and conditions, you cannot use their products for commercial purposes - a term that this team breached when they re-sold their products.
Included in Australian Border Force’s policy is the statement that biscuits, bread, cakes and pastries are only allowed in Australia if they are “for personal consumption”
While the only public statement the real Crumbl has made thus far has been a comment from co-founder Sawyer Hemsley on a TikTok review, saying “You need to try them fresh in the US! PS: This pop-up is not affiliated with Crumbl Cookies,” it has left many wondering if they’re staying relatively silent because it’s not a big deal… or if they’re already getting ready to take legal action.
The valuable lesson businesses can learn from this fiasco is to always be transparent with your consumers, know your legal rights, remain as moral as you can be when conducting your business to uphold trust with your audience, get started on trademarks as your business begins to take off, have a Crisis Communications doc ready to go for moments like, and to always use your own, original branding and content when posting on social media if you haven’t gotten permission to use someone else’s.
On the bright side, at least Crumbl Cookies are now aware that they’ve got a huge audience in Australia for a future (real) store opening!
