An influencer's Bioré ad mentioned a school shooting. Both have apologized.
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A recent ad campaign video for beauty brand Bioré followed the same formula as many popular TikToks: a montage of snippets from a content creator's day, intertwined with clips of a promoted product.
In the video, made to launch during Mental Health Awareness Month, influencer Cecilee Max-Brown was working out, journaling and doing her skin care. At one point, she placed one of the brand's blackhead-removing pore strips across her nose and highlighted the importance of "getting it all out" - it not only being "what's in your pores," as Max-Brown put it, "but most importantly, what's on your mind, too."
But people on social media took issue with the ad, in which Max-Brown described her struggles with anxiety after a gunman opened fire on her college campus in February, killing three fellow Michigan State University students. Critics said the video, which featured upbeat music and product placement, overtly capitalized on a devastating incident and trivialized survivors' trauma.
On Friday, less than 24 hours after the video first posted, Max-Brown removed it from TikTok, but recordings of the ad quickly spread on social media, fueling outrage and garnering millions of views. Online, survivors of other school shootings - including those at Michigan State and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School - mocked the ad.
"I don't know why my therapist or docs didn't tell [me] that Biore pore strips could have helped heal the bullet wound on my stomach, or my anxiety after being shot, or my fear of loud noises, or stop my nightmares, or help me feel ok at school. Firing them and buying in bulk!" tweeted Mia Tretta, a gun control activist who was injured in a shooting at California's Saugus High School.
On Sunday, Bioré apologized, calling the video's tone "completely inappropriate" and saying that the ad "lacked sensitivity around an incredibly serious tragedy."
"This is our mistake, and we own it," Bioré said in a statement. "We let our community down and we let our creators down by not providing better guidance."
Bioré and its parent company, Kao, did not respond to requests for comment.
Ronald Goodstein, a marketing professor at Georgetown University, said the video made the skin care brand appear as if it was co-opting an issue "to drive sales."
"For Bioré to support mental health - it's an awesome thing to do, but don't try to sell your product at the same time," Goodstein added. "Your job as a marketer is to champion the customer, not to manipulate the customer."
In its statement, Bioré said it wanted to "provide meaningful support" to consumers who've said mental health is important to them. The partnership with Max-Brown was meant to amplify her "authentic, unscripted" story about mental health struggles to reduce the stigma around them.
Max-Brown, who graduated this year from Michigan State, has previously addressed the trauma she experienced in the February shooting - airing frustrations in a since-deleted TikTok about people choosing to "protect a gun more than you can protect people's lives." On TikTok, where she has nearly 30,000 followers, she has often posted about her life after college while making videos for other brand partnerships.
On Sunday, she also issued an apology: "This was strictly meant to spread awareness about the struggles that I have had with anxiety since our school shooting. This partnership was not intending to come off as the product fixing the struggles I've had since this event," Max-Brown posted on TikTok.
In recent years, there's been a push for brands to address social issues, such as racial injustice, mental health, gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights, Goodstein said. According to the analytics company Sprout Social, 70 percent of consumers believe it's important for brands to take a public stand on social and political issues. If done right, ads that touch "both the mind and the heart" can help build customer loyalty, Goodstein said.
He cited Nike's 2018 ads with Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who sparked controversy by kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.
One ad featured Kaepernick's face with the slogan, "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything. Just do it." Another narrated by the NFL star showed athletes overcoming adversities. Neither directly called on consumers to buy Nike products.
"And that's why it was so successful," Goodstein said. "Because the way brand equity works in the marketplace is that it's not an immediate thing. You support an issue because you and your consumers believe in it, and they'll have a more positive association with the brand."
Brands suggesting a product will "solve a major world issue" have been less successful, he said. For example: Pepsi's 2017 ad featuring model Kendall Jenner seamlessly diffusing tensions between police and protesters with just the magic of a shared soda can.
"Bioré can't resolve mental health, but they can be supportive of the kind of research that might fix those problems or be supportive of providing resources for people," Goodstein said. "That's very different from making it seem like putting a strip on your nose is going to help someone's anxiety."
Brendan Gahan, a partner and chief social officer at the ad agency Mekanism, agreed: "People don't like to feel like brands or creators are sort of taking advantage of the trust that has been built."
The marketing world has shifted dramatically with the rise of social media influencers. Content creators, who accumulate large followings with their perceived authenticity, are part of an industry that was valued at $16.4 billion in 2022 and has grown nearly tenfold in the past six years. Nowadays, nearly 75 percent of marketers use influencers to promote products, according to data from Mekanism.
But the push for authenticity in ads can be a double-edged sword, Gahan said. While Max-Brown "is speaking to a traumatizing experience true to her," tying that event to a product can put the brand at risk of being "perceived as capitalizing on a tragic moment."
"It's a fine line," Gahan added.
Jessica DeFino, a beauty industry critic and author of "The Unpublishable" newsletter, said the drama with Bioré underscored problems in an industry that has often marketed products as tools of mental wellness.
"The beauty industry has for a pretty long time been feeding us this messaging about beauty products being some sort of solution to stress, or an act of self-care and wellness," DeFino said. "The specificity of this example, equating the trauma of a shooting with a Bioré product, was really jarring."
But it also raises questions about how the American public is coping with mass killings, she said.
"What are the other resources that are available to young women, in particular, who are experiencing these sorts of things in America?" DeFino said. "What resources are we offering to victims of gun violence? Where do they have to turn?"
"Our politicians have completely failed us at every turn," she added. "And so it makes sense that someone who is traumatized, dealing with violence and not offered any sort of real solutions would turn to what they feel they can control."
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