“You could replace Charlotte with the Shamwow guy and it would feel like the same thing”

Anon.

A Mecca Event, Charlotte Tilbury and 25 000 attendees online – what could go wrong?

It’s 7:30 on Thursday evening and I’m bouncing upstairs with a cuppa, my laptop and the excitement levels of a teenager going to her first unchaperoned concert.

I fling over my doona cover, prop myself up on my European pillow and log in to what I think could be the highlight of my 14-week lockdown life – the Charlotte Tilbury Masterclass, courtesy of Mecca (skincare, makeup and self-care haven, taker of many a lockdown $ …. giver of many a dopamine rush).

If you’re a skincare or makeup enthusiast, you would have seen Charlotte Tilbury the luxury makeup and skincare brand finally hit our Australian shores for the first time ever.

There was hype – I mean HYPE. Mecca lovers could finally get the items they’d coveted from afar for over a decade.

25 000 Mecca members signed up to attend the complimentary Charlotte Tilbury Mecca event at 8pm on a Thursday night. 

The event started with Stevie Nicks belting out Edge of Seventeen (forever a banger),  a flurry of chat messages and prompting from Mecca to ask Charlotte questions via the chatbox.

There were three live performances from a girl with the voice of an angel and fireworks (fireworks people!!). Then the woman herself Charlotte Tilbury was on screen. She had three team members in attendance, all in separate locations.

And here’s where it all took a bit of a turn for me.

I did learn a facial massage technique and some application tips which were a little hard to follow at times with the flitting between 4 people and their separate screens.

But the overwhelming majority of the time, I felt flat and contemplated bailing.

I had mixed feelings about my feelings! Why?

• I was grateful for the opportunity
• I freakin love Mecca and everything they are about
• I have 2 Tilbury products, and they are great quality
• Both Mecca and CT are brands. Brands who sell, and I understand  this was a marketing event.

So what gives me the right to feel disheartened and turned off after all of the above?

A post-event poll in a private Mecca FB group asked people whether they had bought something or whether they did not and the numbers were approximately 200 to 1000.

So what went wrong?

I can only speak from my personal experience. While I respect Charlotte as a phenomenal makeup artist, a business woman and an exuberant character, it felt less like a masterclass and more like a hard-core sales pitch … almost infomercial style. 

Why?

Not a single question from attendees was answered.

She didn’t do make-up on anyone, just instructed others to do their own and show it close up on camera.

There were phrases bandied around like the highest profit margin (I don’t want to hear how much money you’re making off me, I want to be WOWED with the benefits of the product and choose to buy it myself).

Number one (insert product name) in (insert countries) was said multiple times.

Celebrity name dropping.

Multiple mispronunciations of niacinamide.

My point here is – you can be a billion-dollar empire, but if your target market feels you don’t understand them … you’ve lost them!

The Mecca FB group is one of my favourite online hang outs.  Much more than people asking ‘where can I get my makeup done’ members value education, self-care, diversity, openness and exceptional service.

Misalignment between your values and the people you expect to buy from you, combined with a lack of clarity around what encourages those people to emotionally connect with your brand can translate into a pushy hard sell, instead of letting the products sell themselves through articulating understanding, product or service benefits and what your buyers want.

We buy on emotion and justify with logic. 

There may be some people that hard-core sales tactics resonate with, but it fell short for me. I want to know what the benefits are, how it will take me from where I am to where I want to be. Let me know how you understand my pain and what your product promise is to alleviate it.

It deterred me from buying even though I had gone with the intention to replace a couple of products that are running low. I’ve opted to check out other options now.

Did you tune in? Do you share my sentiments? I’d love to know!