I talk about:

🔥The problem with Tarte’s new foundation which included 15 shades.

🔥Buyer trends and how the consumer reacted to Tarte’s new foundation range, in particular “white” influencers.

🔥The dismissive nature of their PR team when their customers raised concerns about their new product launch.

🔥How you can learn from their mistakes to ensure your launch is inclusive of all your customers.

Let’s connect:

Episode Transcript:

In 2018, we saw what is considered to potentially be one of the most botched launches for a product and or a brand in the past 10 years.  We saw executives scramble, PR doctors shop everywhere for anything to make them look good. And above all, we got a real time look at the thing people have been screaming for.

Hi, hello, and welcome to Business Unfiltered™: The Podcast. I'm Kristen Kubik, and I'm an Inclusive Marketing Consultant and Business Compliance Advisor dedicated to helping companies run ethically and make sure all voices are heard.  

In case you didn't figure it out, we're talking about Tarte cosmetics' insanely botched launch of their Shape Tape Foundation in 2018.  Now, you might know a little bit about the Shape Tape Foundation launch. I find it hard to believe that people didn't or don't know much about it at this point, so I won't dive into the nitty gritty details, but I am going to give you a really good overview. 

So, we're going all the way back to January 16th, 2018. Tarte Cosmetics posted on their Instagram to head to their IG story to find out which of their new Shape Tape foundation formula is best for your skin type. They posted a screenshot of their story. The screenshot that they shared has two forms of the foundation. 

It has the mid tone range, we'll put it that way. Here's the problem. Thanks so much to honestly one of my favorite people in the beauty community, Trend Mood. They are an insanely really, really good at just finding the nitty gritty, the behind the scenes, the stuff that no one really wants you to find, if you will. 

They found the preview of the collection before it launched for the Shape Tape Foundation.  That being said, they posted it and as you can guess, that is when the internet lost their minds, and in my opinion, rightfully so. Now, Trendmood posted screenshots of the color ranges for both the matte and the hydrating foundations, which each came in 15 shades. 

Here lies the problem. There appeared to be two options, and I'm not even going to say appeared anymore because it was a fact, there were two options for darker skin tones within the whole 15 shade range - 15 minus 2 is 13, leaving 13 shade ranges for lighter colors. For lighter skin tones, my children of the cauliflower, as TikTok likes to say. 

It was very, very clear  that Tarte had, I'm gonna go ahead and say historically excluded the same people who notoriously have been asking. to even be thought of. And this was the issue, is they just completely failed to give a shit. Honestly. So here's the thing. Whenever we were talking about the  launch of the shades, we were talking about the 13 shades for lighter skin tones, two shades for darker skin tones, and there were Uh, there was obviously a ton of backlash, but the Tarte executives didn't actually move, at least from what I could find, until a lot of larger white influencers started making noise. 

And I think that's very interesting, right? So, they received a lot of backlash for failing to include, like, any sort of wide shade range, especially when you had the year before in 2017, Fenty Beauty come out and launch 40 shades of their new foundation. And I'm actually gonna get into that in a, in a separate episode because I think that is also a really, really interesting case to go through or a case study to go through. 

Now, I will also preface the fact that this controversy, inclusivity, especially in beauty brands, in makeup, especially foundation and concealers, is not specific to Tarte. I think it is also very, very specific to other brands. However, this is one of the most prominent, in my opinion, and it is one of the most easily recognizable.

It is also something that people really learned from and when I'm talking to a lot of my clients, this is one of the ones that I use all the time because I think it is such a good learning curve for why you should, why you shouldn't, things like that, and what to do and what not to do. So, that being said, back to Tarte. 

When we were talking about Tarte. They honestly scrambled. They came out and their PR statement said, and I quote, “we did not have time to create more shades”. 

I'm guaranteeing you probably had the same reaction I did, which is, what? A statement like that by a brand makes customers lose trust in the brand. They essentially dismissed an entire set of people,by saying that they didn't have time for their customers. 

That is a whole other issue in itself. And that just makes the brand trust crumble even further. Right? So the big thing is when we're looking at the brand trust and you come back at us and say, we just didn't have time. Everyone's just going to kind of go, Hmm. Okay. So what did they do to rectify it?

They came out with Ten more shades later. And then they said, and they relaunched the Shape Tape Foundation. And they said, ooh, look at us, we fixed it.  And they hoped that everything was going to be forgiven. 

We're going to take that, and we're going to look at buyer trends for a second, because I think this is really important, especially when we're talking about something like a botched launch, you attempted to PR doctorate and PR spin it, you attempted to rectify it with another launch.

So what are we talking about in terms of buyer trends? How does this affect your buyers?  Well,  in 2019  studies showed that customers were more willing to take action. And by take action, I mean, to purchase, to share, to talk about it, to recommend things like that  when they see brands using inclusive messaging. 

These same studies also showed an uptick in younger viewer retention. So we're talking about carousels, we're talking about slides, we're talking about email marketing, we're talking about TikToks, short term video, even long form video, things like that. The thing that I found the most interesting is that the two highest categories in this study were  number one, LGBTQ plus inclusion, which had 75% of action taken by the customer. 

And then the second one was race and ethnicity representation. And that one came in right at 70%, so they were right neck and neck. And it just goes to show that whenever we think that representation doesn't matter and that inclusivity doesn't matter, you're alienating so many people who will gladly spend money with you.

And when we're now in an age where there is such a big spending problem. And I don't mean a spending problem as people are spending too much. I mean a spending problem as people are not going to frivolously spend. They are so intentional about what they're doing when they're spending, right? So when we're looking at that, the other thing I like to look at is a 2022 study from PWC (Price Waterhouse Cooper) that showed ramifications for brands losing the customer's trust. So this is where we look at things that people will not do anymore if they lose trust in your brand. They're all almost tied at around 70, 65, 75%. 

But we're talking they're not obviously gonna buy from you, but then they're not gonna recommend the company, they're not gonna share the company on social media, they're not going to obviously maintain company loyalty because why would you and then above all they're not gonna defend the company. That's obviously how you let that traction keep going and going and going of your name just getting destroyed and your brand's trust just getting destroyed.

Let's spend this a little “how do you” or “how can you” prevent something like this from happening. Obviously the first answer is don't do it in the first place, right? Like theoretically, you're going to be inclusive. Theoretically, you're looking at inclusivity as a whole, but to do that, you actually have to go one step further, because inclusivity isn't as simple as just saying, let me make sure I put some black and brown shades in there.

It's not as simple as putting a black person in a graphic on your website. It's also making sure that equity is so important in your messaging, right? So when we're talking about equity, we're talking about making sure that everyone starts off having an equal chance.  That is the biggest difference between equality and equity. 

Equality means that you're going to treat everyone the same, but Equity means that everyone's going to start on the same footing, so your messaging has to start with everyone on the same plane. That being said, then you get to really hone in and really talk about or listen for is a better way to put it. 

People's different experiences. Why is this product, why is this service, why is what you're doing, why is this podcast going to benefit somebody's life even though everyone's starting on the same playing field whenever they are going to listen to this, right? And obviously not everyone's going to.  listen to this episode starting on the same playing field, but in a lot of my messaging, that is literally what I try to do. 

That being said, the way you talk with people has to change. That is how you start to bring that inclusivity really in. It's not just about slapping some stuff on there and going, all right, cool. I hope this appeases people. It's about making sure that they feel seen and heard. And you don't get to decide that.

They do. What you get to do is put your best stuff forward and embody the things that your values are going to shine through. Because that's the key here. Your values are always going to show, no matter what. So, that's a fairly quick one. I love to keep my episodes a little quick. I hate doing, like, insanely long episodes.

But, if you haven't already, be sure to follow the podcast. You can find it on Spotify, Google podcast, anywhere you major, you get your podcast. You can also find it on my website, kristenunfiltered.com. You can also find the video versions on my YouTube. Please go subscribe to YouTube. Come say “hi”. I love talking to people.

Be sure to also follow me on Instagram and I will see you next time on Business Unfiltered™: The Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Bye.