Not too long ago, MakeupSavvy  posted about an awesome offer from Klorane. The deal was, simply register and indicate your choice of product, and they'd send you a full sized shampoo and conditioner, absolutely free. Naturally, not having heard of this brand but thinking it was a good opportunity to test it out, I went for it.



The day afterwards, MakeupSavvy edited her post, saying that the brand had contacted her and told her the offer had changed. Now, it was a sample sized product they were giving away, and they weren't accepting any more applicants anyway.

I'm not sure there's another way a brand could have put me right off their products, permanently, any more forcefully. Contacting a beauty blogger to promote your products and giving her incorrect information...not on, at all. Brands wouldn't make this sort of huge mistake (assuming it wasn't deliberate) in their dealings with magazines, would they? So why isn't this sort of professionalism found in brand/blogger interactions?

Companies, bloggers aren't toys and they're not inferior to magazines. Klorane, your samples are going in the bin.

In honour of the #bbloggers discussion last night...

Recently, more and more brands (British ones, especially) have been beginning to interact with the consumer and blogging world via. social networking - Facebook, Twitter and the like.This is good - it makes customers feel more connected with the brand, gives a platform on which enquiries and complaints can be answered (unless you're Sleek) and I'm just plain more likely to buy from a brand that I know more about.

Unfortunately, this seems to have opened the door for sheer ignorance like this:

And this:

Nothing else I can say to this.

I don't even know why you'd advertise the fact you were reselling a company's products ON THEIR OWN PAGE. WTF. That...words cannot comprehend...

The finest in ghetto ass behaviour



et finalement



Ignore my piss poor photo editing and focus on the matter at hand :P

Honestly. Really? You want to publically beg? You don't see anything wrong with that?

At least, if you're going to be too cheap to buy from a line where everything is a pound, do your research first. A company that sells only in the UK and Ireland, and I mean only in the UK and Ireland, for example, is not going to be interested in sponsoring a US vlogger. That doesn't make any sense. If a customer from the US can't physically order, then why would you market to that consumer base via YouTubers? If a brand already has a program directed at makeup artists, why would you not try and enter through that channel instead of making yourself look unprofessional by begging on Facebook. Someone, please explain to me because I can't even comprehend this, on a thousand different levels.

Why should I care? Because it doesn't just reflect badly on the blogger, it makes all of us look bad. It feeds into the stereotype that beauty bloggers are grasping, cheapasses who are stealing money from print media and are unprofessional. Yes, the stereotype is highly undeserved, but it doesn't help when people behave like this and vindicate journalists and magazine editors who think this way about bloggers. If you've got to do it, at least take it to email? 

As soon as a brand becomes reasonably 'talked about', you get a million and one harpies harrasing their Facebook and Twitter looking for free swag, or to obtain free swag by posting swatches or a review of the cheapest product in the line and then spamming the PR rep with it as if to say "Oooh, look at me. Aren't I such a good customer? SUBSIDISE MY FUTURE SHOPPING TRIPS."

Don't even get me started on the fools that can't type correctly.

Shame that a ranty post was required to bring me out of hiatus, but eh. I enjoy releasing pent up exam frustration through the medium of text. I have like five rants lined up so be prepared for anger.