Tarte: It’s my fault, and I have Changed!

Tarte Cosmetics is an American cosmetics company known for its commitment to offering cruelty-free and vegan-friendly products.

Founded with a vision to provide beauty products infused with natural ingredients that benefit the skin, Tarte has established itself as a brand that does not compromise on performance or ethics.

In January 2023, Tarte invited 33 lifestyle and makeup influencers to Dubai to promote Tarte’s new “Maracuja Juicy” foundation product. The influencers posted their luxury flights, gifts, and accommodations in the TikTok and Instagram videos.

However, since Tarte was a seemingly declining brand at that time, some viewers speculated how Tarte could afford that marketing campaign and suspected whether they had an illegal relationship with the UAE’s tourism office.

Reddit channel “Beauty Guru Chatter” abounded with conspiracists, and hashtag #TarteDubaiTrip neared 30 million TikTok views. On top of the conspiracy theories, social media users claimed an opulent trip for “rich, out-of-touch” influencers was tone deaf to the global cost-of-living crisis, and trip attendees lacked diversity.

This was truly a social media crisis for Tarte which aims for environment-friendly value.

After the rumors occurred, Tarte addressed the issue head-on rather than sweeping criticism.

And they choose to voice exclusively with media outlet Glossy.

In the exclusive, Tarte CEO Maureen Kelly promptly addressed concerns about Tarte’s budget, framing Tarte’s influencer marketing budget as “investing in building relationships and building up communities” and expensive gifts as “small business partnerships.”

And that’s truly an art of words.

Tarte also directly addressed its key stakeholders — influencers and their content consumers — in a humorous manner likewise suited to its brand in TikTok.

The official Tarte Cosmetics TikTok posted to its brand page, “POV: you show up for work but the marketing team spent all of our money on a brand trip”.

Kelly also posted a video to her personal TikTok account, reading, “waking up Monday morning scrolling TikTok to find out I fired my entire marketing team” .

And the comments were also very positive and humorous.

· “It’s giving self-awareness!! Ok, Tarte!”

· “This. Is. Amazing.”

· “We love a company that plays into the joke!”

And also they used their efforts to show that they changed!

In April 2023, Tarte hosted a brand trip in Turks and Caicos, inviting beauty and lifestyle influencers as well as media superstars and most importantly added significant diversity to the influencers it invited.

After knowing the whole process, how can we learn from it?

I think the most important thing is that whenever we want to launch a marketing campaign, we have to ensure it matches our brand “value”.

Be careful with the self-expression thing, we always making campaigns for the brand not only the product. As a vegan-friendly brand, they have to think about each movement related to the environment, because that is what their customers care about.

However, Tarte does handle the question successfully. Facing the problem directly is always the best choice which may turn a crisis as a chance.

Every coin has two sides, crisis is not a bad thing. But the first thing is that you have to admit it as a crisis personally, only in that case can you address it properly.