Time solves everything, so…will it fix my lipstick?
On June 12, a scandal broke up…Jaclyn Hill the Youtuber, influencer and professional makeup artist released a YouTube video of 14 minutes titled “My Lipsticks” where she expressed her embarrassment for the failing of her brand’s new product.
Who is Jaclyn Hill?
The youtuber Jaclyn Hill created her reputation as a professional make-up artist by posting videos of make-up tutorials that were seeing by so many people from so many countries. In my case, I’ve lived in Peru my whole life and even if I am not American or born somewhere close to the United States, I also followed this influencer since I’ve always been as a makeup geek, meaning that she is very famous in the beauty industry and worldwide.
This influencer had made many collaborations with amazing and known brands such as Morphe Cosmetics, and as a consequence she sky rocked sales and those unlimited edition products were considered as the most popular for those brands, specially the most successful collaboration.
Therefore, after that success, Jaclyn Hill decided to launch her own brand with a set of nude lipsticks that were supposed to be the most talked about product in the beauty industry.
The Scandal:
Ok… so far, so good. The youtuber launches this “amazing” product with the characteristics that every girl and makeup lover would want, an “essential” in your beauty kit.
So… what could go wrong? Get ready for this breaking news!!!
Thousands of customers started posting in social media such as Instagram and Twitter about flaws and strange features and appearances in the new “Jaclyn Hill lipsticks” such as findings like Mold and Hairs in the products, a true real disaster.
How did social media affected or contributed?
Everyone would wonder…what did the brand or Jaclyn Hill did as soon as they found out there was an issue with their lipsticks and that the whole scandal went viral? NOT TO FACE THE PROBLEM AND INSTEAD, STRIKE BACK TO THE CUSTOMERS!
And this happened because Jaclyn Hill started responding to the people that were twitting about the lipsticks being damaged when they were recently bought, and she replied by saying things such as:
Those were definitely unprofessional replies but also a burst of uncertainty and fear from her and her team that people around the globe would receive the same product with the same defects. As a result, twitter became the main source of communication between the brand, the influencer and the customers on this scandal. And later on, she changed her speech and begun to calm people in Twitter by saying that the brand’s team and her were reviewing the problem.
A few days later, the expected happened…Jaclyn Hill closed all of her social media by closing accounts in order to discuss everything that had occurred with her team and public relations experts.
Putting off the fire:
Finally the moment of truth arrived, and Jaclyn Hill opened back her YouTube account and posted a 14 minute video talking about how sorry she was for the problem with her lipsticks, that she had nothing to say in her defense but the feeling of embarrassment that she had, and how she is trying to make things change inf her brand.
For instance, she mentioned that she fired many people in her team but also hired so many employees to increase and be more meticulous in the quality control.
She had an honest response about what really happened and I believe that customers appreciate those type of values in a person/brand and are willing to give second chances if they promise radical changes.
Therefore, I think this whole situation could have not being avoided because if they knew that they had a problem with the product development they would’ve fixed it before launching it, however the way they addressed the situation was not adequate since they first starting defending the product in twitter and attacking their customers immediately, instead of researching and investigating what actually occurred.
Acceptable decision:
In this particular case, I think that Jaclyn Hill was well advised by her team of Public Relations by closing her social media and preparing the right speech, she also solved the problem by returning the money to every single customer that bought that product, and promised that her quality control team is working on making her products satisfactory for their clients in the next opportunity.
In this cases, Public Relations should be the ones to address the problem and come up with a solution and communication route. They should have a strategic plan and cover every single doubt among the customers, and in these cases, they guided the brand’s face and representant (Jaclyn Hill) to be the person who will face the situation in her Youtube channel.
She had to clean her own reputation as professional, influencer and person. In any situation PR, marketing and the board needs to have a meeting and create a route map but in the end the experts are the Public Relations team, so Jaclyn Hill did well with her decision, she communicated in the right way.
