Beauty Opinion: Sales Tactics Within Beauty Marketing (And Who is Not to Blame)

It is not yet Thanksgiving, but for months, we have been seeing that the flood Holiday beauty collections and enticing discounts is in full swing. This is a wonderful time to pick up gorgeous makeup, skincare, and other lovely things for our loved ones and maybe also take advantage of (for example) the many sets of minis that come out this year as a way to try some new things without buying them in full-size. I am finding myself getting sparked with a bit of this excitement like I do every year, and I am looking forward to continuing to share some gift-giving ideas with you over the next two months.

There is another part of me, though, that feels some frustration with the culture of consumerism , not just with the approaching festive season but that exists in some way all year long. Even more so, I am bothered by some consumers' disgruntled reactions to the marketing tactics being used. Nowhere do I think both these marketing tactics and then the sect of disgruntled reactions to this marketing ring more strongly in the beauty industry than within the YouTube beauty community. Now, I adore YouTube beauty videos and have have made posts dedicated to some of my favorite channels and will keep doing so. Beauty YouTube remains one of my favorite ways to find out about products, and I know I am not alone.

Brands undoubtedly have recognized the appeal of the YouTube beauty influencer. It is a genius form of advertising (and often very low cost compared to more traditional media like magazine spreads or TV commercials). Even though YouTube and social media platforms are becoming more industrialized year by year, they have a very grassroots appeal. People film in their bedrooms often on their smartphones and webcams. It all has the appearance of a friend having a conversation with you about beauty products. It appeals to our human need for friendship and belonging. What better mouthpiece could there be for the already compelling marketing jargon than these people who are “just like us” sharing their experiences but also incidentally spreading messages like:

This is a must-have : While objectively, we can see this phrase is an exaggeration, psychologically, it can plays with our heads. It capitalizes on our wishes to fit in, perfect ourselves somehow or, again, to belong and to bring us the happiness, status, and fulfillment that we all want and all marketing strives to promise.

Hurry! Before it’s gone: This is the scarcity tactic whether the scarcity is true or false or ameliorated by the item coming back by popular demand. But when put in force, this urgent message is spread not only to make the item seem more special, precious, or luxurious but also makes it seem as though a kind of dread or some other bad feeling will be fall of us if we don’t act in time to buy the thing.

Get it, grab it, pick one up: These euphemisms so common in our phraseology mean something far more serious than how carefree they sound. They mean making a purchase, parting with money. The phrase speaks of this in a very casual fashion without much pause. These phrases are especially compelling when spoken by a beauty vlogger on YouTube because they are used so casually as if you were hearing them from a friend.

Of course, these are just three of the many powerful advertising phrases, used not just on YouTube , but by any company, corporation, or business, and advertising industry that ever existed. Are these strategies inherently wrong or bad? In my opinion, no, not really.

Yet, I see so many comments online, especially around the Holiday Season, that essentially blame advertising and almost every beauty YouTuber I watch and blogger I read for having the audacity to use these tactics to encourage buying. It is as if beauty companies or vloggers are made out to be monsters that force us overspend or try to get us to feel badly because we don’t have the latest and greatest things or that we aren’t—or won’t be—worthy without them? Well, one might say that the beauty companies (and the vloggers they've found an excellent marketing resource in) do this to grow their business in a highly competitive industry. I say, however, that THEY are not the ones doing this at all. We do it to ourselves.

Companies are inhuman entities. They might be a collective of individuals with their own needs, preferences, and ideas, but a company itself is largely a machine that is programmed only to respond to our, being their customers, needs, hopes, and desires. The companies themselves cannot make us, truly make us, feel or think in any specific way. We as their customers are the ones who decide how we will react to whatever the company presents to us and how they do it, which, again, is only ever a reflection of our wishes anyway. There is no good or evil in this. It is merely conveying information, even if it is deliberately done in a way that tries to persuade us to buy things from them.

It is not the corporations or advertisers or vloggers/bloggers who are responsible for the purchases we do or do not make and how we feel about those choices in retrospect. That power remains ours, even when we are flooded with advertisements and more drastic deals than we have seen so far this year. This is not to make an enemy of the beauty industry, bloggers and vloggers paid by the beauty industry, or those who film or write to share their experiences of beauty products like I do. It is not to make an enemy of shopping, the gift-giving season, or even taking pleasure in the activity of buying and having beautiful things. It is simply a reminder to know that, one, we are always being marketed to, and, two, when and however much, and on what any of us makes a purchase, That is our own personal choice.