Yo - I love scan club, but the unexplored dark side of the Sephora bit is disturbing and outright irresponsible. Sephora is poaching, not playing. Hosting these birthday parties moves product and creates aesthetic addicts earlier and earlier, which just grows their bottom line. It’s so problematic that they’re placing these events under the guise of helping young girls with “age-appropriate” makeup tutorials during “formative times” while positioning itself as a “mentor” during “key life transitions”! What!? Sephora is worth nearly 40 billion dollars and you want to tell me they care about birthday parties? No way. It’s such euphemistic language to evade what’s really happening. Sephora is not Gandalf or Yoda - it doesn’t serve as a guide in the hero’s journey, so it’s not “mentoring”, but brainwashing. By labeling in-store experiences under the convenient label of play and creativity and “shared moments”, you get away with the real motive: to create more customers, primarily girls that don’t need these products in the first place. Skincare “at any age” is problematic! If only young girls knew that the best products for not damaging your skin are no products at all, but we all know no one is going to tell them that because there’s no money in it. So what’s really next for them? Anxiety, dysmorphia and raging insecurity for younger and younger girls with an aesthetic-first gospel in their ears whispered by fat corporations pretending to be fairy godmothers. Sephora is not throwing birthday parties; they’re creating consumers. Call a spade a spade because this is about addiction, not celebration, and telling brands to get on board with this because it’s an “opportunity” is sincerely frightening.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Dani. While our newsletter approaches these stories from a marketing perspective, you’re right that there’s significant nuance we didn’t fully address in our brief format.
Your points about the dark side of this marketing approach to young consumers are valuable – especially the risk of it becoming more widespread. While these birthday parties are already happening (whether we agree with them or not), spotting these early signals helps us understand where marketing and behavior is headed and lets us all make informed choices about whether to support or oppose such practices.
Wish we could grab a coffee and dive deeper into this – it’s exactly the kind of complex discussion that deserves more conversation!
There's definitely some nuance, but if I can fit a meaningful argument in the comment section, surely Scan Club isn't too brief of a format to leave said nuance out. And that's obviously you're prerogative, but noticing it as a trend doesn't wash your hands and leave you out of the responsibility of how talking about it does, in fact, promote it even if only by "Hey, we're just noticing what we're noticing here!" standards. I'd challenge you to take the dive-deeper coffee to the podcast because you do have places for complex and long-form discussions that allow for nuance and that are online and influential. I would absolutely tune in.
Yo - I love scan club, but the unexplored dark side of the Sephora bit is disturbing and outright irresponsible. Sephora is poaching, not playing. Hosting these birthday parties moves product and creates aesthetic addicts earlier and earlier, which just grows their bottom line. It’s so problematic that they’re placing these events under the guise of helping young girls with “age-appropriate” makeup tutorials during “formative times” while positioning itself as a “mentor” during “key life transitions”! What!? Sephora is worth nearly 40 billion dollars and you want to tell me they care about birthday parties? No way. It’s such euphemistic language to evade what’s really happening. Sephora is not Gandalf or Yoda - it doesn’t serve as a guide in the hero’s journey, so it’s not “mentoring”, but brainwashing. By labeling in-store experiences under the convenient label of play and creativity and “shared moments”, you get away with the real motive: to create more customers, primarily girls that don’t need these products in the first place. Skincare “at any age” is problematic! If only young girls knew that the best products for not damaging your skin are no products at all, but we all know no one is going to tell them that because there’s no money in it. So what’s really next for them? Anxiety, dysmorphia and raging insecurity for younger and younger girls with an aesthetic-first gospel in their ears whispered by fat corporations pretending to be fairy godmothers. Sephora is not throwing birthday parties; they’re creating consumers. Call a spade a spade because this is about addiction, not celebration, and telling brands to get on board with this because it’s an “opportunity” is sincerely frightening.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Dani. While our newsletter approaches these stories from a marketing perspective, you’re right that there’s significant nuance we didn’t fully address in our brief format.
Your points about the dark side of this marketing approach to young consumers are valuable – especially the risk of it becoming more widespread. While these birthday parties are already happening (whether we agree with them or not), spotting these early signals helps us understand where marketing and behavior is headed and lets us all make informed choices about whether to support or oppose such practices.
Wish we could grab a coffee and dive deeper into this – it’s exactly the kind of complex discussion that deserves more conversation!
There's definitely some nuance, but if I can fit a meaningful argument in the comment section, surely Scan Club isn't too brief of a format to leave said nuance out. And that's obviously you're prerogative, but noticing it as a trend doesn't wash your hands and leave you out of the responsibility of how talking about it does, in fact, promote it even if only by "Hey, we're just noticing what we're noticing here!" standards. I'd challenge you to take the dive-deeper coffee to the podcast because you do have places for complex and long-form discussions that allow for nuance and that are online and influential. I would absolutely tune in.