The Balancing Act of Ethical Choices

You might have noticed from reading this blog that I have some pretty strong opinions about a lot of things. I have things I am very much For, and things I am Against, and I like to uphold my opinions in the form of action through ethical choices wherever possible. I'm very much For independent small businesses, and so I like to buy from them wherever possible. I'm very against fur for fashion, so I avoid buying clothes that involve fur. But these are very simple, straight forward examples. When it comes to buying cosmetics the idea of ethical choices can become an almost impossible quagmire.

Choosing cosmetics is a complex proposition at the best of times. Before I buy something, I will always consider quite a few different factors - does it REALLY work the way it says it will? Will I actually use it? Do I REALLY like it? Can I afford it? This last question in particular can be a real make or break one for a lot of people, and honestly, I think that if you're in that sort of financial situation you can go ahead and have a pass on fussing about whether your choices are as ethical as they could be. If you have to wear lipstick to your minimum wage job or you'll get fired, and the only one you can afford it tested on animals? Then you just go ahead and buy whatever you have to, you'll get no shade or shame from me. Ethical considerations are essentially a middle class issue, something that only becomes relevant when you have some sort of disposable income that you can spend as you please. Luckily, I'm in a situation where I can afford (most of) what I want, so the other two points are the main factors for me.

Bloggers+Indie Brands = OTP Part 2: The OKCupid Principle

Welcome back to the second part of my Bloggers+Indie Brands= OTP Series!

If you missed the first part, you can find it here

 

Part 2. The OKCupid Principle

Telling you to be respectful and play nice in order to succeed is all well and good, but what does that actually look like? What should you say? What shouldn't you say? Do you need different approaches for different people? Perhaps the most succinct way to explain how to communicate for both sides is that for maximum success, you should approach brand/blogger collaborations with the same basic principles as successful online dating. If you've never done online dating, you might not know this, but there's a real art to navigating it successfully, and almost all these principles can be applied to getting a successful relationship between bloggers and indie brands off the ground.

Bloggers+Indie Brands = OTP Part 1:R.E.S.P.E.C.T

I've only been blogging for just over a year, so I'm hardly what you'd call an expert on the subject. However, for a good ten years before I started blogging I was in Marketing and PR for various different firms, across a wide variety of industries.  While I'm still not an expert in marketing per se, I do have a ton of experience about how to get the most out of interactions between small media and small brands. Most of my career was spent convincing regional papers to cover things like Stamp Collecting Month, so if I know anything, it's how small media and small brands can help each other.

Just imagine customers are the crab - sorry customers.
Picture from National Geographic

Indie cosmetics brands and beauty/nail bloggers, in ideal circumstances, have an amazingly symbiotic relationship that I find absolutely fascinating from a marketing point of view. Indie brands don't have a lot of money to advertise their products (usually), and in a happy co-incidence, bloggers tend to be a pretty cheap form of marketing. Indie brands can't afford blanket awareness campaigns for their products, and so the vast majority of their sales are made through positive buzz, word of mouth, and reputation. It just so happens that these are the things that bloggers rely on for their audience, and also the primary thing they have to offer indie brands. Without a positive reputation, positive buzz, and word of mouth recommendations, both bloggers and indie brands are likely to severely limit their audience - but by working together well, both parties can gain a ton of what they need. Indie brands that work with bloggers get their products in front of eyeballs that might otherwise never see them, and bloggers who work with indie brands get a great deal of goodwill and "cool" status from covering products other people don't.  Indie brands and bloggers are truly what fandom calls OTP - one true pairing, an ideal pair of perfectly suited parties. When it works smoothly, everyone wins - but I've noticed it doesn't always work as smoothly as it could.

The Good, The Bad, and the Horrific of Customer Service

The basic principles of customer service always seemed to be pretty straightforward to me, but it's become pretty clear to me lately that a lot  of companies just don't have the first clue how to treat customers in such a way that they are actually likely to return willingly. I find it hard to believe so many businesses employ people who have no interest or ability to treat customers pleasantly - that just doesn't make sense to me. There can't possibly be that many clueless people in the world. The alternative is that a lot of businesses are actively turning away and discouraging potential and current customers because they're not the kind of customers they want, for whatever reason. Maybe they're too fat, or too poor, or too black, or too gender ambiguous. Whatever the reasons, this is a completely ludicicrous business model. The global marketplace is packed with alternatives to whatever you happen to be selling, and it's getting more crowded by the day. The ability to sell things online has made the number of potential businesses in any given marketplace virtually limitless, and I've heard a lot of brick and mortar storefront companies complaining that this is ruining their businesses. In my opinion, this is complete nonsense. Online stores are only taking business away from brick and mortar stores because they've been treating their customers so badly for so long that customers are fleeing now they have a choice about it. Sure, you have to wait ages for stuff ordered online, and you can't try it on, and sometimes it's not at all what you thought it would be like - and STILL customers are fleeing brick and mortar stores. The way they treat a lot of their customers has been SO BAD that all the downsides of online shopping are still preferable. When the prices are higher, and the hours you can shop there are restricted, pretty much the only upside that brick and mortar stores have over online stores is the immediacy of the purchase, and face to face customer service. But it seems a lot of them can't even get that right, even though it's almost all they have to draw in business.