Revlon in the hot seat

Revlon, oh Revlon. What a fine mess you've gotten yourself into.

Two weeks ago SMACK! shared an action alert from the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and the Breast Cancer Fund, urging consumers to put pressure on the powers-that-be at Revlon to reduce the toxic chemicals in their products (see original post here). It's a team effort with the group Ultraviolet, which created its own petition for Revlon. Apparently the ensuing negative attention is kinda frosting Revlon's a$$ a little.

Here's a timeline of events to get you up to speed:

Oct 2:   Revlon announces that David Kennedy has been named interim CEO, replacing Alan Ennis in the corner office
Oct 25:  The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and Ultraviolet announce their joint efforts to campaign against toxic chemicals in Revlon cosmetics
Oct 31:  Revlon names Lorenzo Delpani President and CEO
Nov 1:   CSC and Ultraviolet issue a press release about receiving the threat of legal action from Revlon

I love this for many, many reasons. First, I find PR debacles of this magnitude very, very entertaining. Not the ones where people or cute animals get hurt, but these, when you can watch the suits make the dumbest possible decisions again and again. 

Interesting to note Revlon's pretty quick response time. They were obviously feeling defensive when they took that swipe back at the Campaign, the Breast Cancer Fund, and Ultraviolet, in the form of this letter. I mean, a week is nothing in corporate time. I swear big companies run on the same clock as the NFL, where 5 minutes lasts about an hour and a half. And this pestilant little problem is hardly how Delpani wants to start his tenure.

But still, Revlon, dude, tell me you didn't really just go after the little guy. The feminist group. The cancer group. The day after breast cancer awareness month ended (that is no coincidence). Does the story of David and Goliath ring a bell at all? You do know how that ended, right? And you do know how the Internet loves an underdog, no? 

**facepalm**

So, er, Revlon, really the only choice here was to eat your sh*t and tell folks you would review your product ingredients to ensure the high quality standards that helped make Revlon a global leader in the cosmetics industry. See how easy that was?

But that's not what Revlon opted to do. Instead, they tried to use their might, wrapped up in lots of legal and scientific terms and other big, intimidating language. Defamatory. Misleading. Irresponsible. Maybe they were hoping everyone would go off quietly into the night, taking everything off the Internet with them.

They were wrong.

Revlon forgot the first rule of all things that go viral on the Internet: that sh*t spreads like wildfire. The leaders behind this campaign, upon receiving Revlon's sternly-worded letter, made the bold decision to share it. While still controlling the message and maintaining the upper hand. So now everyone who's following this story knows that Revlon is acting like a jerk. And sure, plenty of you will tell me that the company has to protect its interests which, yeah, it does. But not by trying to strong-arm organizations that tap into your customer base. How is alienating current and potential customers ever a good strategy?

So far no major news outlets will touch this story. If the folks at Ultraviolet, CSC and the Breast Cancer Fund have their way, though, this thing will very soon blow wide open. They issued another joint press release telling Revlon to stop bullying them and then put together this graphic for the interwebs:

And here we are, talking about how Revlon can't get out of its own way to take care of a problem of its own making. Well played, activists, well played.

-- Jazzy