What Shea Moisture Learned (So Far!) From Its Social Media Disaster
Sundial Brands co-founder and CEO Richelieu Dennis talks about the controversial ad, the social fall-out, lessons the brand has learned so far from the experience, and more.
Yesterday was a busy one for Shea Moisture. A social content campaign the brand launched late last month suddenly caught fire. But not the good kind of fire, more like the dumpster kind.
One video in particular, featuring four women talking about their struggles with self-confidence as it relates to their hair, drew the ire of Shea Moisture’s primarily African American consumer base for excluding them from the conversation. The video is part of a series of up to 40 the brand created with agency VaynerMedia, profiling more than 20 different influencers.
By last night the brand had issued a full apology across all its social channels and pulled the ad. “Wow, okay – so guys, listen, we really f-ed this one up. Please know that our intention was not – and would never be – to disrespect our community, and as such, we are pulling this piece immediately because it does not represent what we intended to communicate.”
Shea Moisture parent Sundial Brands co-founder and CEO Richelieu Dennis says as the brand broadens its consumer market, it cannot forget or even appear to forget its core audience.
“It just shows the level of love and passion people have for the brand, and how much they want to make sure it continues to stand for them, even as it starts to broaden its audience, they want to make sure they’re not left behind,” says Richelieu. “And that’s clear to us. We need to make sure we spend the time engaging with that community, encouraging them, and letting them know that just because we’re growing doesn’t mean they’re less important. in fact, they become more important because they’re the ones who have always advocated for us.”
He says he recognizes the larger issue here, that goes far beyond a haircare product. The racial stereotypes that have impacted black women, and their lack of representation in media and advertising, were not adequately taken into consideration. “To equate their struggles with hair to those of other women, is in their minds trivializing their struggles, and we can’t forget that,” says Richelieu. “The people who are unhappy here aren’t necessarily saying they don’t like white women. What they are saying is, for decades they’ve been underserved and white women have plenty of products on the shelves and advertising aimed at them, and that we should keep our focus on our audience, and not lose that focus just because we’re broadening our audience.”
In hindsight the brand should’ve been more conscious of featuring more examples of its core consumers’ hair types, as well as made sure the individual videos were more clearly shared as part of a larger series.
“What we should’ve done is maybe a mini-documentary to tell the whole story, then take snippets from that for social posts,” says Richelieu. “We could’ve said, let’s do many more hair textures instead of just two or three. There are definitely lessons here and we’re not perfect, we’re not always going to get it right. But what we are always going to do is learn from it.”
As the brand continues to talk to its fans, navigating the fall-out from the social media storm, its chief executive remains optimistic and has found a silver lining.
