beauty brand digital pr mistakes and what to learn
Five beauty brand PR fails show a shared pattern: each brand made a decision that customers, regulators or retail partners later challenged in public, and each ended up responding on the record. The cases are Tarte's 2023 Dubai trip, Sunday Riley's fake reviews, Dove's 2017 Facebook ad, TRESemmé's 2020 South Africa ad and the 2020 renaming of Fair & Lovely. Each section gives the dates, the sources and the lesson.
What did Tarte's 2023 Dubai influencer trip teach PR teams?
Tarte Cosmetics invited 50 beauty influencers on an all-expenses-paid trip to Dubai in January 2023, in collaboration with Sephora Middle East, and TikTok users called the event tone-deaf during an economic crisis, according to Cosmetics Business.
Founder and CEO Maureen Kelly said on January 23 that the brand had run similar trips before and that she understood a knee-jerk reaction to the volume of content. Tarte then posted a TikTok of a mascot walking through an empty office, with a caption joking that the marketing team had spent the budget on a trip. The video passed 2.7 million views.
A brand trip becomes a public event once creators start posting from it. Test the cost and the timing against the news cycle before departure, and prepare the CEO statement and the creator briefing at the same time.
What did Sunday Riley's fake reviews teach beauty brands?
The Federal Trade Commission alleged that between November 2015 and August 2017, Sunday Riley Skincare managers, including founder Sunday Riley, posted reviews of the brand's products on Sephora's website using fake accounts and asked other employees to do the same, according to the FTC's consent agreement announcement. The agency also alleged that the company obtained an ExpressVPN account after Sephora removed reviews, to hide its activity.
Fortune reported that the investigation followed an internal email posted on Reddit's r/SkincareAddiction. The FTC took action on October 21, 2019, and the settlement carried no monetary payment and no admission of guilt, according to law firm Hunton. The commission later approved the final order, in November 2020, by a 3 to 2 vote.
Disclose every review that a company or its employees write, or do not write them. The order requires Sunday Riley to disclose endorser connections and to instruct staff on their obligations, per Hunton. Build those rules into the review process before a regulator or a Reddit thread forces the issue.
What did Dove's 2017 Facebook ad teach brands about creative review?
Dove posted a three-second Facebook clip in October 2017 that showed a Black woman removing a shirt to reveal a white woman. Dove removed the post and said it had "missed the mark in representing women of color thoughtfully," as the Associated Press reported.
Dove told ABC News that the full clip showed three women of different ethnicities, each removing a matching t-shirt to reveal the next, and was meant to show that the body wash is for every woman, per the ABC News report. The screenshots that spread online showed only the Black woman turning into the white woman. The Associated Press also noted that a 2011 Dove ad had drawn similar criticism.
Review creative as the audience will see it, including the single frame that gets screenshotted. A short clip can be cropped into a different meaning, and the cropped version is the one that circulates. Check a brand's own history of criticism during that review.
What did TRESemmé's 2020 South Africa ad teach brands about retail partners?
In September 2020, an advertisement commissioned by TRESemmé and carried on the website of South African retailer Clicks labeled Black women's hair as dry, damaged, frizzy and dull and white women's hair as fine, flat and normal, Al Jazeera reported. Clicks removed the ad and apologized, and TRESemmé South Africa apologized as well.
Clicks then removed all TRESemmé products from its shelves, and demonstrators damaged seven Clicks stores, per Al Jazeera. After almost a week of protests, Unilever agreed to withdraw TRESemmé products from South African retail stores for 10 days, according to Dispatch Live. TBS News reported that Unilever's South African unit also moved to set up an advisory board and a diversity committee.
A retailer carries the consequences of a supplier's creative on its own website. Agree in writing who approves co-hosted advertising with each retail partner before any ad runs on that partner's channels.
What did the Fair & Lovely rename teach brands about fixing a claim?
Unilever said on June 25, 2020 that it would drop the word "fair" from Fair & Lovely, a skin-lightening cream, in response to a global backlash against racial prejudice, as NBC News reported citing Reuters. On July 2, Hindustan Unilever announced the new name, Glow & Lovely, and renamed the men's range Glow & Handsome, per the Free Press Journal.
Hindustan Unilever said it had already removed before-and-after images and shade guides from the pack in India in 2019, in a statement carried by the Associated Press. Bloomberg reported that the rename fell short of activists' demands to stop selling skin-whitening creams altogether.
Match the fix to the criticism. When critics object to what a product promises, a new name answers only part of the objection. State what changes in the product, the claims and the imagery, not only on the label.
What recovery moves did these brands use?
Four recovery moves appear across the five cases, and each is documented in the sources above.
Dove removed the post and apologized in plain words within about a day.
Clicks and Unilever pulled the TRESemmé ad and products from South African shelves, and Unilever's local unit set up an advisory board.
Sunday Riley accepted an FTC order that requires disclosure of endorser connections.
Unilever renamed Fair & Lovely and removed before-and-after imagery.
What should a beauty PR team check before launching a campaign?
Run five checks before launch, one drawn from each case above.
Test the cost and timing of any influencer event against the news cycle.
Disclose every paid, gifted or employee-written endorsement.
View short videos as a cropped screenshot, not only as a clip.
Get written sign-off from each retail partner that will host the creative.
Confirm that any promised fix answers the actual criticism.
Originally published June 2025. Updated October 2026 by the EPR editorial team. Facts are as reported by the linked sources. The FTC allegations in the Sunday Riley case were settled without an admission of guilt.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team is the staff byline for news, analysis and features on communications, reputation, AI visibility and digital discovery. Everything-PR has published since 2009. AI tools assist with research and drafting, and every article is reviewed by a human editor before publication. Coverage follows the Editorial Policy, and substantive corrections are noted on the article under the Corrections Policy.
