Luxury brand Chanel roasted online for $1,025 advent calendar full of stickers, other trinkets

Iconic fashion house Chanel is being dragged online after a social media influencer unboxed the company's advent calendar and discovered it was full of trinkets that don't appear worth anything close to the $1,025 price tag.

The brand launched the advent calendar this year in a box of items numbered from five to 31. Unlike traditional advent calendars, which start on December 1st and are followed by new treats to be discovered every day for the next 24 leading up to Christmas day, Chanel's starts on day five as a nod to the brand's iconic fragrance, Chanel No. 5.

The calendar was released this year to celebrate the fragrance's centennial, which was released by the company's eponymous co-founder Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel 100 years ago.

TikTok user Elise Harmon obtained one of the kits and broadcast herself opening up its contents, which included a full-sized bottle of hand cream, a miniature tube of lipstick and a bottle containing 35 millilitres of perfume, but was mostly just miscellaneous branded items, including stickers with the company's logo, a dust bag, a magnet, a bookmark, a key ring, and a flipbook.

"Stickers?" Harmon exclaims in her first video on the unboxing of the kit, which has been viewed more than 14 million times since it was posted four days ago. "This has to be a joke," she says of the kit, which retails for $1,025 Cdn.

"I'm kinda bummed so maybe I should just open something else," she said.

Many of the items in the calendar aren't sold individually. But included among the items for which a price is listed or comparable are:

While reaction to the videos has been mostly negative online, marketing expert Scott Stratten says what Chanel is actually selling isn't that abnormal, by luxury brand standards.

"I could argue that for most luxury brands, you're paying for a name versus the item you get, but this kind of does push the boundary a little bit," the founder of Unmarketing told CBC News in an interview.

"The pushback doesn't equate the actual impact to the brand," he said. "Every person sharing this right now on TikTok or Instagram or anywhere else is also giving them exposure and marketing [and] if you're that into Chanel, you don't really care what other people think about a calendar or a box or an item."

But, Los Angeles-based digital marketing expert Alexandra Nikolajev says the calendar was a missed opportunity for the Chanel brand to connect with a younger audience that values authenticity and transparency.

The predominantly younger users of TikTok are an audience "they should want to be developing and cultivating as future consumers of Chanel," she said in an interview with CBC News. "They didn't hit the mark on the expectation of that audience," she said, describing the entire story as "chaos" for the brand.

WATCH | Marketing expert explains how Chanel missed the mark:

On its website, Chanel says there are "ultra-limited quantities" of the calendar for sale, and its Canadian website appears to suggest that it is no longer available.