Category: Proctor and Gamble

The longest corporate legal battle

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… or so it seems.

I am no fan of direct selling or multi-tier marketing (examples: Amway, Mary Kay). I don’t like the aggressive selling or recruitment of customers to be salespeople, with the benefits accruing to those above them. Moreover, I don’t like how many of these companies often conflate religion with selling a product.

Probably the most egregious example to conflate religion with selling products was the rumours spread by Amway distributors to tie Procter & Gamble to satanic worship because of P & G’s (former) use of a logo featuring a man in the moon and 13 stars. I suspect that the distributors thought that this would play well among conservative Christian customers. For more background, see Logo controversy on Wikipedia. I regarded this effort to be defamation of P & G.

Now Amway is challenging the decision that they pay P & G nearly $20 million in legal expenses:
Amway claims P&G Satanic damages to be improper

What’s New in Beauty: June 10, 2005 – Mary Kay, Estee Lauder, reflect.com, Sephora, Maybelline

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Mary Kay vetoes ads on Desparate Housewives – A Christian group successfully lobbies Mary Kay to pull ads for ABC’s Desparate Housewives. May we expect TV ads featuring Nicolette Sheridan (NuGlow), Eva Longoria (signed with L’Oreal), and Teri Hatcher (who has a deal of her own) to pepper Desparate Housewives? Talk about cross-promotion!

Gwyneth Paltrow signs with Estee Lauder – The favorite of celebrity magazines, who named her daughter Apple, has signed a contract to appear in ads for Estee Lauder cosmetics and fragrances. As with the signing of Tom Ford, this appears to be another effort on the part of Estee Lauder Companies to boost sales of its flagship brand as consumer buying trends change.

P&G to close reflect.com – The master marketers (and innovators) at Proctor & Gamble haven’t always been successful when it comes to cosmetics. P&G had a big rollout of Olay color cosmetics in supermarkets, drugstores, and other mass merchandisers, only to discontinue the line a couple of years later. Now comes news that P&G will close reflect.com, the customized cosmetics web site. Last day for order is Monday, June 13, so hurry!

reflect developed a color palette called the California Beauty Kit for Chico’s, the women’s clothing and accessories chain. This warm color palette features matte eyeshadows for day and shimmer eyeshadows for evening, along with a blusher, bronzer, and two lip colors. The price was cut from $55 to $29. While not available through Chico’s web site, you might yet be able to find it in stores.

Sephora announces the winners of its 2005 Best of Sephora vote. 87,000 fans voted. Winners includes Nars blush in Orgasm, DuWop Lip Venom, Stila Lip Glaze, and more. Go to Sephora.com to shop the winners.

Maybelline goes upscale with signing of Kevyn Aucoin protege – I still have a problem calling Maybelline “Maybelline New York,” as its corporate parent L’Oreal would have us call it. No doubt it has to do with the fact that I remember Maybelline as a child putzing around Kresge’s dime store (and the reference to Kresge’s alone betrays my age!), but the name “Maybelline” also conjures up Chuck Berry’s song of the same name and Mother Maybelline Carter of country music’s pioneering Carter Family – not exactly the image of urban sophistication that L’Oreal would like to convey. Still Volum’Express is my favorite mascara and I like its Dream Mousse Matte Foundation.

In another effort to go upscale, Maybelline has signed Troy Surratt, protege of the late, great makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin, as its star makeup artist and has already rolled out a new ad campaign featuring him. Previously, Surratt succeeded his mentor as beauty advisor at Beauty.com.

HOUSEKEEPING

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I just completed an update of the HOUSEKEEPING page. I discovered that this page had not been updated in several months. This page provides links to many house cleaning brands that are environmentally safe and non-toxic (solid waste from empty containers continues to be a problem, however). Formerly, one could only find these products at health food stores; now, one can find them at supermarkets and other mass-market retailers. Target is marketing products from Method Home. Williams-Sonoma has a line branded under its name, but read the find print, and you’ll see that the products come from Caldrea. Restoration Hardware is also marketing a line of environmentally safe and non-toxic cleaning products. Direct sales company The Pampered Chef sells environmentally safe and non-toxic cleaning products through its sales consultants.

Method hand soap - cool packagingThe Style Page has tried Method laundry detergent, Method liquid hand soap, ecover lau

ndry powder, Tsunami Wave laundry capsules, and Caldrea dishwashing liquid, and can recommend them all. Our household relied on ecover for laundry as my husband and I were being treated for dermatitis. Those who follow this blog should know by now that I’m a sucker for great packaging, and the packaging for Method liquid hand soap is really cool!

The Style Page is not a granola-munching, Birkenstock-wearing purist: the Housekeeping page also provides links to products from 3M and Proctor & Gamble. If you cannot justify paying a premium for natural cleaners, simply use less of your current products: for example, try halving the amount of laundry or dishwashing detergent you use per load and see if the results are about the same. You know by now that wash-rinse-repeat is merely a marketing gimmick to get you to buy shampoo more often; now simply use less detergent for dishes and laundry.