Lush Cosmetics Washes Its Hands Of Social Media. Should you?

When it comes to marketing your business, certainty is a much-coveted commodity. But there’s a catch:

Marketing is a minefield of unknowns and crystal balls are in short supply.

Sometimes, the best certainty your brand can attain is not by guessing the future. It’s by being radically clear on what’s happening right in front of you.

That’s why, last Friday, cosmetics giant Lush pulled their social media channels offline, abandoning the promise of clicks and likes, for a more uncertain future. They made a bet on who they wanted to be, not on how to “guarantee” results.

Here’s Lush CEO Mark Constantine: 

“I’ve spent all my life avoiding putting harmful ingredients in my products. There is now overwhelming evidence we are being put at risk when using social media. I’m not willing to expose my customers to this harm, so it’s time to take it out of the mix”.

This kind of focus on the health and wellbeing of customers is a gamble. Not because it isn’t right, or because it isn’t the way business should be done. It’s a gamble because not many businesses are willing to really go all in. And if your competitors don’t share your convictions, then it’s up to the customer to side with you. And that’s an enormous amount of trust placed in the customer’s hands. Uncertainty…again. 

But Lush decided long ago what they thought of their customer and how much trust they were willing to put in their hands. That posture is evidenced by both the quote from Lush’s CEO above, as well as this line from their official press release:

“We wouldn’t ask our customers to meet us down a dark and dangerous alleyway – but some social media platforms are beginning to feel like places no one should be encouraged to go.”

Something has to change.”

The more a business requires certainty, the more they make their customer deal in the dark alleys. Selling cosmetics on Instagram is a sure-fire win. But Lush was willing to accept uncertainty to give their customers confidence. 

There will always be uncertainty. The question for every business is – who bears the brunt of that uncertainty? If you take it on as a business (as Lush has) then you let the customer relish in the confidence of knowing who they’re buying from. 

But if you avoid the uncertainty as a business, then you push it onto the customer. Because you weren’t willing to do the work to be clear about who you are and what you stand for, it’s the customer who always pays the price.

Long before social media became a “dark alleyway”, Lush decided to care for their customers and their customers have cared for them back. In North America alone Lush boasts around 200 stores. 

And when you walk into one of those stores, everything about the experience is meant to convey that customer care – from how shoppers are treated by associates, to how products are marketed, to the care that goes into the creation of those products, and so on. 

The reason for doing all these things is simple: 

When you care about your customer, you teach them to care about themselves. 

It’s right there in Lush’s press release statement: Something has to change. Of course by that Lush meant social media platforms and the way their engineered, governed, and used. But when the leaders at Lush realized that those things weren’t changing fast enough to help their customers, they changed the only thing they could: themselves. 

Even though it meant creating some unknown in their future, and losing about $13 million in revenue a year, Lush leveraged their love for their customers and their certainty about the past and present to say, “We don’t know what the future holds, but we know who should hold that future – it’s the consumer and their wellbeing.” 

And then they pulled the plugs on their social media accounts. 

One of our defining values at CultureCraft is Grit & Grace. Yes one not two – they’re a package deal. By Grit & Grace we mean that uncertainty is essential to marketing’s formula and implied in every great piece of design, content, or strategy that we make for our clients. Uncertainty is part of the process, and sometimes the most innovative part. 

And because of this uncertain nature, we are a team that welcomes the unexpected. Along the way, we press forward with fortitude (Grit) and treat each person with the dignity of a fellow traveler (Grace). The business of brand building is a journey, and we’re on that road together with our clients. 

How we go is as important as where we go.

In early 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic ramped up with ferocity and speed, Lush extended an invitation to anyone off the street, to come into their stores and wash their hands for free. “We’ve got loads of soap and plenty of hot water,” said Mark Constantine. “If people just get into the habit of washing their hands properly, it will make a dramatic difference to public health.” 

Now, in 2021, Lush is washing their hands of social media in hopes of helping to make a dramatic difference in what they see as a public health crisis. A crisis of the mind and heart, not just the body.  

No matter where you stand on social media and the metaverse (and rest assured the time is coming when everyone will need to decide where to stand) how you make decisions as a brand matters just as much as where those decisions will carry you. 

Lush chose long ago to base their decisions in the health and holistic wellbeing of their customers. And they backed it up on Friday by going dark across the social media world. Will they be back? 

Maybe. If change truly does come to social media platforms. But until then, they’re not waiting to make a change, and neither should you. 

Certainty doesn’t live in the future, it lives in the here and now. And it starts with your customer and your brand, and knowing which one comes first. 

Ready to get certain?