If there’s one thing businesses should fear, it’s pissing off the makeup community. I’m talking Jeffree Star, Mikayla Nogueira, even controversial James Charles — they have single handedly started brutal rage wars against makeup brands throughout the years.
This time, Sydney-based beauty influencer Jillie Clark has come out swinging against Mecca’s recent “50 cent cost per wear” campaign, calling it out as misleading and labelling it as “false advertising” and potentially harmful during the current cost of living crisis.
In a video that’s racked up more than 140k views on TikTok (at the time of writing), Jillie’s taken her math skills to Mecca’s claims, and the results are about as pretty as your first attempt at winged eyeliner.
“Mecca, how exactly did you quantify this?” Jillie asks in her video. “Because the title of your article is ‘We’ve Done The Maths’. Well, so did I, and so did ChatGPT, and I’m going to show you what I found.”
The campaign in question, which dropped in November last year, claimed that people could slap on a full face of Mecca Max products for just 50 cents a day. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, according to Jillie it just might be.
She points out that for some products you’d need to use an amount so small for it to add up to 50 cents, there’s no way you could complete a full look.
She measures out the Off Duty Serum Skin Tint in syringe. “That is exactly 0.08 ml. That’s how much product you’re telling people to use for their full face,” Jillie explained.
Here is a quick cost per wear analysis for all the products mentioned in the Mecca article:
In the Mecca article they state that the Cost-per-wear is “based on average daily recommended usage amount (in AUD)”.
Jillie also pointed out that even if you used these products daily, they’d expire before you could validate the cost per wear.
“Now the fucked up part’s not even the amount of product,” Jillie continues. “It’s the fact that this has a six month expiration, which means that at 356 uses, even if you wore this every single day, it would still expire before you had the chance to validate the nine cent cost per wear.”
Jillie gives the brand a scathing critique: “Let me be so clear to everybody who is purchasing Mecca Max products that’s watching this. This kind of marketing, this kind of campaign, relies on you as the consumer, not pulling back the curtain.”
She went on to say, “Mecca, instead of choosing to pull this data from a pool of your consumers and their individual consumer behaviors, you have decided to dictate to us how much of your product we should be using, and in doing that, you’ve provided us with at least two products that would actually expire before we even had the chance to validate the cost per wear that you dictated.
“The title of the article for this campaign on your website is, ‘We’ve Done The Maths’,” she said.
“That suggests to me that you knew about this, yet you chose to green-light a price focused marketing campaign in a cost of living crisis that relies on the Australian consumer not looking behind the curtain,” Jillie continued.
“Shame job.”
The video has sparked major outrage towards Mecca. One commenter wrote, “Spot on! Sounds like they’re exploiting cost of living concerns for financial gain through misleading claims.”
Another said, “Oh wow this is so dodgy on their behalf! thank you for your awareness.”
Some reckon it’s “not that serious”, to which another user clapped back, “Truth in advertising is absolutely serious and completely a slippery slope.”
Jillie isn’t the only one to point out their concerns with the campaign. On Reddit a user posted about it in November.
“Not sure if it’s just me, but it really isn’t hitting for me how they think it should, particularly on reflection of how my own routine stacks up.. it’s actually a bit of an ick and a prompt for me to assess (what I’m using and where I’m buying it from) and to likely simplify my routine,” they wrote.
One Redditor responded, “yeah it seems like they’re trying to make economic struggles trendy almost?”
A Mecca Max spokesperson told PEDESTRIAN.TV that in order to validate their measurements, they asked six internal product experts to create an everyday makeup look using best-selling MECCA MAX products.
“We took their average usage amounts, measured on a precision scale (a weighing device that provides high level of accuracy when measuring minuscule amounts), and divided them by the product price. We know everyone uses products differently depending on their preferences and skin type, which is why we took the average amount,” said the spokesperson.
“For example, Off Duty Blush Stick was used by each of the six product experts, and we took the average weight, which was 0.01g per use. Based on $20 per 6.5g, this is $0.03 per use. ”
When it comes to the concerns of how long you’d be able to use the products for under their guidelines of the campaign they said, “All the products used in the campaign include a ‘period after opening’ (PAO) date, which is essentially a ‘best before’ date after opening — not an expiry date. MECCA MAX’s PAO dates are conservative, and the expiry will depend on how the product is stored. ”
They also told PEDESTRIAN.TV that all the paid influencers part of the campaign are only wearing MECCA MAX products in their content.
“Not all influencers would have had access to precise measurement tools, so we provided general guidance to help them create their looks. This is why there may be some variance in coverage and may result in a very small difference to the cost of the look depending on how much of the products were used. ”
Despite their efforts, in these trying times of sky-high lettuce prices and rental nightmares, Mecca’s attempt to position itself as the budget beauty bestie seems to have come under major fire.
Lead Image: Jillie Clark/TikTok
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