eos lip balm lawsuit
We decided to look into eos lip balm because of James welsh s recent vid The EOS Lip Balm Lawsuit - When Beauty Turns Ugly. What created the rise popularity of EOS lip balms? Lets look at the product, marketing and distribution of these lip balms.
Product and Store Presence
First it has to do with the shape of the container. The orb of lip balm was really attractive to a lot of people. A round lip balm was completely new. I wanted one just because I thought it looked cool.
What the founders realized is that women would Carry lip balms in their handbags and that it could essentially be like a fashion accessory because lip balm is constantly reapplied. Especially in colder climates like here in Canada
Because of that frequent use people buy many lip balms to have in different bags. So consumers could justify an impulse purchase if they saw a new container color or flavour. There were a lot of new an interesting flavors that you could try like honeydew or grapefruit. It was exciting, and personal, now you could buy a unique flavour in your fav container. They were very prominently displayed in stores. At the checkout. In isle at the front at eye level. They sticked out leading to more purchases. The other thing they did well was creating scarcity. The flavours and colors rotated out so you had limited time window to purchase the special additions.
Social Media
Unlike their competitors EOS decided to focus heavily on their social media presence and build a following compared to incumbents that hadn't really done so. they made videos on how to customize your EOS lip balm by bedazzling it. as well as how to take an EOS lip balm and you know make it Nutella flavored by mixing it in with Nutella They had a lot of celebrity endorsements. Eos was everywhere. Katy Perry Britney Spears Kim Kardashian endorsed it. people saw a lot of famous people using the product and wanted to try it.
EOS Lip Balm Lawsuit
Eos has had controversy where reports of people getting blisters and rashes around their mouth after using the product. The FDA did do an inspection of the eos facilities but they found nothing that could have resulted in such a severe reaction eos also uses a number of contract manufacturers and contract manufacturers Are oftentimes more incentivized to create lower cost products as opposed to higher our quality ones https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetic-products/eos-lip-balmr-products
Some believe that lip balm companies intentionally create products to dry lips to make you buy more lip balm. Alot of common lip balm ingredients can be drying or prone to allergic reaction. I'm not sure its a conpiracy, but its always worth while to understand ingredient listings and the products purpose. I really like jen luvs vid about this The REAL reason why your lip balm sucks... (part 1)
So what happened? Why did eos lip balm lawsuit happen? Why was there such a push back against eos? In part it had to do with using influencers which was very new at the time. There were not as many widely available techniques on managing influencer relationships.
When news broke out that some ppl did not react very well to Their lip balm news travelled through the same channels. So many influencers refused to promote eos for fear of seeming in authentic.
They also had not built other kinds of promotion such as philanthropic endeavours or thought leadership. Essentially they grew too fast.
They may have also used dodgy contract manufacturers to meet demand... This may have caused the problem in the first place.
Here is an article about it: