Why I’ll Never Support Beauty Brands That Fearmonger for Sales
Welcome to The Beauty Debrief where beauty editor and nail tech Tori Crowther shares her musings on the latest beauty trends, buzzy treatments and misinformation. Today, she’s discussing why she will never support brands that fearmonger or promote dangerous beauty habits.
As a beauty editor, I really do get my pick of the lot when it comes to beauty brands and products. Because of this, I’ve become rather fussy — or thoughtful, depending on how you look at it — about the brands I choose to align with.
My biggest gripe with the beauty industry at the moment is fearmongering. This year, I’ve spent a far higher proportion of my time debunking misinformation than any other.
Brands — not exclusive to just the beauty industry — have used fearmongering as a marketing tactic since the dawn of time. OK, not quite, but they’ve done it for a long time. It’s an extremely successful way of getting consumers to make fear-based choices about the products they buy. There are even countless articles online about how brands can successfully use fear to promote purchasing in audiences. Pretty gross, right?
This tactic has ramped up recently and I think we should talk about it. I can think of two recent examples of fearmongering in the beauty industry that have signalled a worrying trend.
The first is a brand (I won’t mention because I don’t want to give them an ounce of publicity) that went into Tesco with a very official-looking white lab coat on and told people to rub beef tallow on their skin instead of using the perfectly safe, rigorously tested, sunscreens on the shelves. Obviously, the brand was trying to flog its (overpriced) beef tallow cream, which, despite being called ‘sunscreen’ noted that it couldn’t prove its SPF rating that it’d labelled for itself. *repeatedly bashes one’s head against a brick wall*.
Myself and many of my industry peers commented that the basis of this video was untrue, hyperbolic and downright dangerous. I won’t go into all of the reasons why, that’s a whole other story for another day and requires expert input (because remember: ‘doing your own research’ with a quick Google doesn’t qualify you as a skin cancer expert, chemist or toxicologist).
Image – Alex Ruhl/Adobe
After being called out, they doubled down on their misinformation and then thanked everyone for making Instagram’s algorithm work in their favour.
Now, to be clear, I believe people should follow whatever routines and beliefs make them feel safe. What I don’t believe in, is doing so in a way that is untruthful and damaging to others.
This founder’s 5 minutes of fame in Tesco could be the reason someone gets severely sunburnt. One blistering sunburn can more than double your chances of getting melanoma in later life. That’s not a joke and that’s not something worth ‘cheating’ the Instagram algorithm for. All to flog your own products.
The second ridiculous case of scaremongering I’ve come across fairly recently was from makeup cleaning company ISOCLEAN. Now, these products are great. Their ludicrous TikTok content on the other hand? Well, ludicrous.
This makeup brush cleaning company claims that:
“Our brush soap has a carbon-based absorption technique, which will remove the build-up of heavy metals. Because if you didn’t know, makeup products actually contain metals such as lead, arsenic, mercury, nickel, the list honestly goes on.”
Yep, this is from a 2024 TikTok, not a cosmetic deep dive from the 1800s.
@isoclean Replying to @Sussexfem1988 Thats a whole lotta benefits ? Ensure a safe makeup application with clean brushes ? #isoclean #isocleanbrushcleaner #brushcleaning #cleantok #alien #cosmic #isocleancosmic #cleaning #beautyhack #muamusthaves #makeupessentials #clearskin #cleanbrushes #isocleancarbonbrushsoap
? love song (hesitations) (sped up) – Lofuu & Shiloh Dynasty & dprk
Regardless of this wild claim, it’s a strange argument to make. Because should your makeup contain these supposed metals, it’s already on your face so removing it from a makeup brush isn’t going to do anything if you’re just going to reapply that makeup to your face the next day anyway.
Make it make sense.
When I quizzed the PR agency who looks after ISOCLEAN about this they had no idea this was being posted, though the video is still live so I’m guessing the brand didn’t have any internal talks about how ridiculous this content is. Unlike other internal teams, social media teams aren’t held to the same high standard of fact-checking and it’s so damaging.
Before TikTok became a beast infiltrating our everyday lives, fear-based marketing happened but content had to be approved. People cared about facts. You couldn’t get any old rubbish on TV without it going through a fact-checking and advisory board.
Online is the wild, wild west, my friends.
So what’s the takeaway here? Sometimes it feels almost impossible to separate fact from fiction.
The first thing I always tell people to consider is what’s in it for the brand posting these ridiculous claims. What benefit does this fear-based drivel give the person preaching it? For the vast majority of the time, they’re selling you their solution. They don’t care about your health or wellbeing, they care about lining their pockets. They want you to be scared of something to sell you their overpriced solution. It’s also always worth remembering that if a brand has to aggressively tear others down, their sales aren’t likely looking too hot.
The second is, what are their sources and are they using confirmation bias? You can make almost any scientific paper fit a narrative if you base it on the abstract alone and cherry-pick data. As much as it would make everyone’s lives easier, you can’t base a paper on its abstract alone.
Finally, do they have experts in the field endorsing this information? Unless there’s a chemist, toxicologist or, in the first brand’s case, a skin cancer specialist who is treating patients from a life-altering disease, then they don’t have your best intentions at heart.
Although I’m a beauty editor, I’m also a consumer who recognises my money is my power and I’ll always take it elsewhere if I get so much as a whiff of fear-mongering.
Get Glowing!
