Crisis Strategy Brief: ColourPop & Lemonhead LA

Lately, I haven’t heard much going on in the world of crisis management and crisis communications. Although, I recently heard about a social media issue recently. Today’s crisis was brought to my attention through social media and has been contained on social media since. In fact, there are mixed feelings about sides, which can be a blessing or a nightmare for us public relations professionals. However, you can read the full story on this reddit forum.

Crisis Strategy Brief- ColourPop

From my understanding, ColourPop has been relatively quiet on this issue. This can be a good or bad thing. Perhaps ColourPop views the claims as ridiculous and are hoping it will blow over. However, I always advocate for the position of releasing a statement regardless of the size of the issue. Plagiarism is a serious accusation and a simple apology and response would’ve cleared everything up.

Crisis Strategy Brief- Lemonhead LA

Lemonhead LA is a bit on the defense in this situation as they are essentially making the claims against ColourPop. However, I would have advised the owner of Lemonhead to not even mention it on social media for the exact reason that many of ColourPop’s fanbase could fire back against them. This is what kind of happened here and a lot of people took ColourPop’s side on the pivotal factor that ColourPop is more affordable.

However, going forward, Lemonhead really needs to ramp up their PR around their products because the drama could deter potential consumers. So, doing a collab, a promo video, or something creative to generate positive sentiment is definitely needed here. I wouldn’t say that Lemonhead needs to release an official statement, but they do need to play extra nice on social media.

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Photo by Chelsea London Phillips on Unsplash