Anna Paul and STAX slammed after event fail

The last week has been a nightmare for Australian influencer Anna Paul, after her meet and greet events with clothing brand STAX last week came under fire.

Celebrating her new clothing launch with STAX, Paul held several meet and greet events in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth which have left fans majorly disappointed after their lack of organisation when more people turned up than they had planned.

Perth’s meet and greet event has been the most controversial event, after adoring fans waited for Paul for hours before the event was promptly cancelled due to safety concerns.

Paul’s meet and greet event was promptly shut down by police as thousands of teenagers began to line up, causing disruption and chaos as they chanted Paul’s name, with some allegedly throwing deodorant bombs into the crowd, leading to serious medical assistance being needed.

After only expecting around 200-300 people to come out to the event, STAX and Paul have been left scrambling to try and address the situation via their social media channels, especially after thousands had turned up for both previous events in Sydney and Melbourne.

Paul took to her TikTok to address the situation with partner Glenn and brother Atis by her side, who were also in attendance of the events.

Paul stated: “I thought only like 100 people would come… I had extra security in Perth after seeing the numbers in Sydney and Melbourne, but police had to shut it down immediately to avoid serious damage.”

Fans have come out on their social media and expressed their concerns and unhappiness for the lack of organisation as it put multiple people in danger and put the blame onto STAX for their lack of foresight, especially after similar events played out in Sydney and Melbourne just days before.

STAX put out an apology for Perth fans before police fully shut down the event, stating that, “due to crowd control we are unable to proceed with today’s meet and greet in Perth… We are overwhelmed with the response and cannot thank you all so much for continually supporting STAX and all that we do.”

 Events for social media creators like these raise questions around whether brands fully understand the scope of influence that creators truly have, especially as Paul has over 5 million followers on her TikTok, and over 2 million on Instagram.

From our perspective, this event could have been planned much better with more security, the police’s prior knowledge, and a ticketed system so that no one could ‘push in’ and jump the queue, leading to much less disappointment in the long run. It definitely wouldn’t have stopped people from trying to get their chance to meet Paul, but saying only the first 200 people to get in would meet her only lead to chaos.

By Mikayla Han, PR & Influencer Assistant at InsideOut PR