Professional make-up artist and beauty vlogger Jaclyn Hill has cut all ties with Gerard Cosmetics in a process she revealed “was not easy”.
Gerard Cosmetics was caught up in a social media backlash recently after the owner of the lipstick brand was captured on Snapchat calling a blogger ‘the ugliest person ever’.
In May, a snapchat video was filmed by male beauty vlogger MannyMUA. The video featured the owner and CEO of Gerard Cosmetics, Jennifer Gerard, with MannyMUA, explaining that viewers were “watching hateful videos of Gerard” – videos in which vloggers gave negative reviews of Gerard Cosmetics products. At the end of the Snapchat, Gerard herself was heard calling the vlogger on screen ‘the ugliest person ever’ while laughing.
The vlogger targeted was Karina Kaboom, who regularly posts videos on YouTube with reviews of beauty products. In a review of some Gerard Cosmetics lip products, Kaboom explained she had suffered an allergic reaction to a few of the items and did not rate them highly.
The MannyMUA Snapchat video was met with a backlash among followers, prompting MannyMUA to post a video apology. Shortly after the original Snapchat video aired, Kaboom posted a video response to the name-calling. In her reply, Kaboom said: “Going on social media and bullying your customers and saying they are ugly, hey, that’s one way to run a business. You want to run a business that way, I wish you all the best.”
She added: “Throwing rocks at a customer and calling them names on social media isn’t my idea of how I would run a business. You should make your products better so that I can repurchase and I can do a positive review instead of going on social media and saying these vile things about your customers. I gave you my hard-earned money and believed in your company, and I didn’t like the products and I said so.”
Kaboom also alleged that Gerard Cosmetics asked beauty vloggers to sign contracts in which they commited to giving only positive reviews of the brand before sending products to them for review. Kaboom added: “They obviously have very shady and very unethical business practices.”
Hill, a high-profile beauty vlogger with more than 279K followers on Twitter and more than 2 million on YouTube, launched a collaborative collection with Gerard Cosmetics last year comprising four lip products.
However, two months after the Snapchat video aired, Hill has come to the decision that she will no longer be affiliated with the products or the brand, with all mention of her name and her images removed from the brand’s website. “I have been in the process of cutting off all ties and my affiliation with Gerard Cosmetics, which was not easy to do. I’m sure a lot of you can guess the reason behind this and I don’t want to go too in-depth.” She added: “It’s honestly just a lot of different things combined.”
Gerard Cosmetics did not respond to Cosmetics Business' enquiry by the time this article was published.
