Social media serve as an advertising platform for many companies. Nowadays it is hard to imagine marketing strategy without them. Now, however, the cosmetics company Lush is doing without its social media pages as part of a campaign. We explain the background.
It’s a step that hardly any large company has dared to take. The cosmetics company Lush would like to delete all their brand, shop and person accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Tik Tok from November 26, 2021. The accounts on Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn remain active.
The change in social media guidelines has several reasons, like Lush in his Press release explained. The company says the “worrying impact” of social media has received little attention so far.
Lush’s reasons for opting out of social media
Lush claims social media has moved more and more away from a relaxed place in the past few years. Instead, they used algorithms to “tie people up scrolling to their smartphones and keep them from switching off and relaxing”.
The aim of the cosmetics company is for people to take care of their well-being. Social media have increasingly become the “opposite of this goal,” says Jack Constantine, product inventor at Lush.
At the same time, the group aims to get those responsible to change something. “Strict guidelines” and internationally legally anchored regulations against inhumane technologies are needed on social media platforms.
Lush’s Anti-Social Media Principles
“Lush doesn’t wait any longer and is now addressing this issue,” the press release said. This resulted in eight guiding principles: the so-called “anti-social media principles”. The company uses them to determine how it will deal with the topic of social media in the future.
For example, Lush is always committed to using the latest communication tools to get in touch with its customers. However, this form of communication should not be controlled too much by third parties.
In addition, the cosmetics provider only wants to use platforms and services that do their best “to protect users from harassment, damage and manipulation”. The company no longer wants to use platforms that use manipulative algorithms in the future.
These services should also be designed in such a way that “the risk of excessive use is minimized and healthy user behavior is promoted”. The brand promises to always keep its considerations in mind when considering new platforms. Lush presents all of them verbatim Principles on its website.
Serious campaign or just image polishing?
The question arises as to what is really behind the action. Is Lush aware of its responsibility as a company and is it therefore drawing conclusions? Or is it just another PR stunt?
The fact is, the company’s social media accounts weren’t that far-reaching anyway. By the time of going to press the Lush Instagram account “Only” a little more than 75,000 followers. The British and at the same time international account has around ten times the number. However, the last post was published about three months ago.
