Unraveling the Florasis Crisis: Lessons Learned from Li Jiaqi’s Controversy

Li Jiaqi overturned the goods live broadcast

Li Jiaqi, a beauty expert, successfully challenged the Guinness World Record for “the most people applying lipstick in 30 seconds” in September 2018, becoming the world record holder for applying lipstick. In recent years, with the rise of the live-streaming model, Li Jiaqi has quickly become popular on social media. As of March 2024, the total number of fans on multiple platforms is nearly 80 million.

On September 9, 2023, during a live broadcast, when Li Jiaqi introduced the 79RMB Florasis eyebrow pencil, he saw a netizen leaving a message saying that it was getting more and more expensive. He said bluntly: “It’s not expensive at all!” “Has the salary increased after so many years? Have you worked hard?” These two sentences exposed the contradiction between the bosses and the workers on social media, triggering public dissatisfaction and questioning. Later, Li Jiaqi issued an apology statement late at night and expressed that he sincerely accepted everyone’s criticism.

However, the apology failed to calm the storm. The focus of public opinion has gradually expanded from Li Jiaqi’s remarks to the brand behind him— Florasis.

Florasis becomes the focus of public opinion

Florasis has always adopted a strategy that emphasizes marketing and neglects R&D. Because the product itself has no obvious functional advantages, Florasis relies too much on the KOL live-streaming delivery model. This means that the brand image is deeply bound to the personal image. Once there is a problem with the image of KOLs, the brand image will inevitably be affected. Even though Florasis distanced itself from Li Jiaqi and said it was Li’s personal opinion, most netizens did not accept it. The first post on Florasis’s Weibo(like X) was immediately boycotted by the “workers” message that was hurt by Li Jiaqi's remarks.

In addition, the mismatch between the cost and value of the product itself also causes consumers to question Florasis. On September 11, questions about the price of Florasis products also arose, and the brand issued a statement, which quickly became the first hot search on Weibo. Public opinion quickly changed from questioning Florasis’s pricing, quality, technology, and anchor sharing, to mocking their PR time and their PR copywriting for evading important matters.

A few hours later, it was reported that the public relations department of Florasis resigned en masse in an attempt to distance themselves from the statement. In addition, consumers and bloggers on Weibo began to speak out in support of Florasis, which to some extent diverted attention and prevented further damage to the brand image.

This incident allowed consumers to see that Florasis did not pay attention to public relations and did not respect public relations. On the subsequent Double Eleven Festival, Florasis’s sales lag compared to its competitors.

If the brand can respond to Li Jiaqi’s crisis proactively as soon as possible and show sincerity and determination to be open and transparent about prices, it may be able to control the spread of the negative impact of the incident to a certain extent and even increase consumers’ favorability. However, Florasis’s way of handling the crisis tends to shirk responsibility, make vague remarks, and ignore consumer demands, which can only lead to greater public dissatisfaction.

In addition, what is more important is that Florasis strengthens product research and development, focuses on product innovation and quality improvement, enhances product added value, and creates a competitive product line. And increase investment in self-media channels to reduce reliance on individual KOLs.