Confusion in the rabbit hole? Cosmetic companies using spin with cruelty-free status to consumers

Hey cruelty-free beauties!

Have you ever felt like companies are unclear about certain facts about the products or the company itself? I'm not talking about the "Better Than Sex" claim that Too-faced put on their best-selling mascara, but their status to whether they continue to stay cruelty-free or not.

Many companies recently this year and the last have decided to state selling in the Chinese market, which by law requires animal testing, and continue to promise they are still 100% cruelty-free. We've seen this recently with Urban Decay, NYX cosmetics, Kat Von D cosmetics, Yves Rocher, L'Occitane and many more in the last year or two. This can be very confusing because on their official websites, they state that they are cruelty-free but in common knowledge, to sell in China, animal testing is required.

During this transition, customers were feeling in the dark about the whole situation and the companies were not responding in a clear manner. It seemed like, for example, NYX last year was beating around the bus about their current status on animal testing. According to their website, NYX claims:

                  "…while we do not currently sell our products in China, they are currently available from third parties in limited distribution. As we continue to expand our business internationally, we are aware that some countries require that local labs perform tests on animals as a prerequisite to give permission for products to be sold within their countries and we actively support efforts underway to change these practices."
 These statements can be really confusing to consumers, because it is not clear whether they do or do not test on animals. NYX still claim to be cruelty-free and it is up to the consumer to decide whether they still want to purchase from them or not. Personally, I will no longer be purchasing.

According to the Canadian PR for the Real World, spin is more or less defined as strategic word placement to bring across a point or bit of information in the most strategic way possible for the company. Spin has had a bad connotation in the PR world and is more or less looked as something bad and a form of lying. In this specific case, it is clear that NYX used a form of spin to somewhat confuse their customers into thinking they are still cruelty-free, when they clearly aren't.

Image acquired from the amazing cruelty-free blog: " http://www.mybeautybunny.com/cruelty-free-brands/"

You might be asking yourself, how will I know if brands are still cruelty-free or are own by parent non-cruelty-free companies? For more information and to have the official list of of cruelty-free brands, check http://features.peta.org/cruelty-free-company-search/index.aspx, regularly.

Thank you for reading this far, leave a comment below on what you think about these companies using spin to fool their customers?

STAY HUMANE & UNTIL NEXT TIME!

Sara Pivato

For all the citation purposes, please check out the link below.

http://elephant-room.org/index.php?route=blog/article&article_id=29

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2181468/Big-beauty-brands-dropping-cruelty-free-animal-testing-policies-sell-products-China.html

http://www.online-pr.com/Holding/The_Dangers_of_Spin.pdf

http://features.peta.org/cruelty-free-company-search/index.aspx