Are Influencer Collabs A Good Idea?

by BR Tabatha

One of my favourite things to do is to sit down with a nice cup of tea and watch beauty gurus present the latest makeup releases on the market while giving their commentary on the products. Lately, one trend I've noticed, and that the YouTube beauty gurus themselves have commented on, is the amount of influencer and beauty brand collabs that have been coming out over the past few months. 

It got me wondering... are people buying what these brands and influencers are selling? And if so, why? And what are the risks of collaborating with someone who has made it big on a social media platform? 

People who rise to the influencer top do so because there's something relatable or aspirational about them. To us they can feel like friends and, much like our real life friends, we believe we can trust them. So when they recommend a product or work with a company to create a product, we're happy to support them because we believe they wouldn't steer us wrong. So, on the surface, a brand collaborating with a well-known influencer is a stroke of marketing genius that can and does work... except for when it doesn't.

Morphe is a brand that instantly comes to mind when it comes to collabs that have gone right... and wrong.

Their Morphe 2 collab with the D'Amelio sisters, who found fame on Tiktok, has gone from strength to strength. Jaclyn Hill's first palette was an instant hit... but then her vault eyeshadows bombed in a big way due to inconsistencies in the product, which reflected badly on both Jaclyn and the brand. Morphe's collabs with some of the boys in beauty were also hits... until said influencers found themselves involved in assorted controversies that saw Morphe cut ties with them.

Here's where I find myself wondering just how smart it is to team up with an influencer? Influencers aren't perfect. Even if they like to portray themselves as being exactly that. They can have messy pasts, they can have prejudices, some can walk the criminal line, and in this day and age where cameras are everywhere and people are ready and waiting to screenshot an ill thought out tweet, it's not so easy to keep a squeaky clean image. Which means that there's every chance of an influencer falling from grace and damaging a brand's reputation.

And it's not just brands that can find themselves in a quandary when an influencer's bad behaviour comes to light. We - the people who paid good money to buy their collab - have to ask ourselves the hard questions too. Like, can we in good conscience continue to use a product with the name of a person who's known to be racist or a person who has behaved inappropriately with minors emblazoned all over it? Is keeping it a show of support? But is throwing a perfectly good eyeshadow palette or lipstick out the better option when you're then adding to landfill? (I say good riddance to bad rubbish, but then I am privileged enough to be able to afford to buy a new palette, and I know not everyone can do that.)

These days, having watched the rise and fall of one too many influencers, I keep my product purchases collab-free. And I wonder if in the future this will be the way companies go. In saying that... I've just seen that Pixi is collaborating with one of the biggest influencers ever, Hello Kitty. And the collection is super cute. And what chance do we have of Hello Kitty suddenly becoming problematic? (Famous. Last. Words.)

So what say you, beauty community? Have you bought an influencer collab before? Was it for love of the brand and you liked the way the product looked, or due to the influencer backing it? Or do you steer clear of collabs preferring to keep your beauty purchases influencer, and potentially drama, free?