That $500 'influencer apology' email from a brand I actually liked felt super fake

So I got this email from a skincare brand I've been using for 2 years saying they were sorry for a marketing fail where they photoshopped a model's skin too smooth last month. But the email was clearly written by some PR intern with generic lines like 'we value your trust' and zero specifics about what they'd change. On one hand, at least they acknowledged it publicly instead of ignoring it like most brands. On the other hand, does a copy-paste apology email actually fix anything, or is it just a checkbox? What do you all think - does a half-hearted apology do more harm than good in these situations?

3 comments

3 Comments

mila_flores82d ago

Oh wow that's the thing that gets me about these brand apologies now. They're all so rehearsed and copy pasted that it almost feels like an insult to our intelligence. Like hey you emailed me this generic garbage but you couldn't even be bothered to make it sound like a real human wrote it. For me it does more harm than good because now I know they care more about checking a box than actually changing anything. At least if they'd said nothing I could pretend they were working on it in secret.

daniel_lane302d ago

@mila_flores8 nailed it. Copy paste apologies are worse than silence, it's like they're not even trying.

nathanj562d ago

That $500 number you mentioned got me thinking, because I actually looked into the whole influencer apology price thing after seeing a similar post last week. The skincare brand you're talking about is probably Glow Lab, right? I saw their email template floating around on Twitter and it was almost word for word what you described. But here's the thing that bugs me - you said they photoshopped the model's skin too smooth, but I read the original controversy and it was actually that they used an AI filter that completely changed the model's skin texture and pores. It wasn't just smoothing it was basically erasing all skin texture entirely. That email felt extra hollow because they didn't even get the problem right in their apology. So yeah, I'm with you on the copy-paste thing doing more damage than saying nothing, because now it feels like they're just going through the motions without understanding what they did wrong.