[ad_1]
Aside from makeup, there’s one thing Tarte is really good at — creating a buzz on TikTok. Earlier this year, the cosmetics company went viral after TikTokers called out their Tarte Dubai influencer trip as tone deaf for sending creators like Alix Earle and Monet McMichael on a bougie, all-expenses-paid vacay. Some TikTokers claimed the trip was a marketing mishap, but Tarte seemed unbothered, responding to the criticism with a tongue-in-cheek TikTok featuring their Shape Tape mascot. The brand has continued to host TikTokers and beauty influencers for their #TrippinWithTarte adventures, but their most recent trip is getting some heat from the actual creators themselves. CEO of Tarte Cosmetics, Maureen Kelly, has even responded to the Tarte Island drama on TikTok.
Jumping into the Tarte drama kind of feels like getting stuck between two fighting besties. You want to know the full story, and that can be hard when there are so many TikTok videos to watch in order to catch up. This is when a TLDR breakdown is necessary, and it all starts with Tarte’s most recent trip to Turks and Caicos, especially if you’re wondering, what is Tarte Island?
The Tarte Island influencer trip brought content creators like Earle, Meredith Duxbury, and Stassie Karanikolaou to Turks and Caicos to stay in Prince’s former island estate. Instead of staying in a hotel, where every influencer was given an identical suite, they were staying in a home. That meant not every creator was offered the same accommodations.
Cynthia Victor (@shawtysin), one of the influencers on the trip, revealed that she was given one of the smaller rooms in a TikTok video. Victor shared that she wasn’t aware that her room wasn’t as nice until she saw room tours from some of the other influencers on TikTok, and felt that she got the “short end of the stick” as a “minority creator.” She also said it wasn’t the size of the room that upset her, but feeling that she was not being treated equally as a BIPOC creator. She also said she was upset some creators got to stay longer than others.
Tarte Island was broken up into two trips for different groups of influencers — Tarte Island Season 1 and Tarte Island Season 2. Victor was a part of the Season 1 crew, who went home before the Season 2 creators took over. However, some Season 1 influencers got to stay for both of the Tarte brand trips — aka double the free vacay time.
Some TikTokers Feel Tarte Treats Some Creators Better Than Others On Their Brand Trips
It was Victor’s video that inspired Bria Jones (@heybriajones) to share her experience with Tarte in a now-deleted TikTok. In her confessional, Jones shared that she was invited to Tarte’s Miami Formula 1 trip. However, Jones had to back out of the experience after feeling slighted by the team. “I would love to go on a Tarte trip,” Jones says, “But I have more integrity than to get all the way to Miami and realize that I’m being treated like a second tier person.”
Jones shared that she was originally invited to attend the race, but after checking her plane tickets, she realized Tarte was going to send her home the day before. When questioning her friends, who were also going on the trip, about their schedules, she found out that they were all flying out Monday after attending the race on Sunday. “As grateful as I am to be invited on a Tarte trip, I was sad to realize my experience was going to be different than my friends that were also invited,” Jones wrote in her caption. “I have been on many brand trips and typically everyone is treated the same, so this caught me off guard. I wish I had the heads up.”
Tarte Responded To The Tarte Island Drama On TikTok
It didn’t take long for Kelly to respond to the criticism and clear the air with her own video. The Tarte CEO, who said Tarte has been hosting influencer trips for over a decade now, claimed that there was some miscommunication over these recent influencer trips.
In response to the Tarte Turks and Caicos trip room controversy, Kelly shared that she’d rather have more influencers there and fill out all the rooms rather than only put people in the large suites. For the Formula 1 Tarte Miami trip, she shared that everyone was originally going to get the same schedule, which included one day at the racetrack. Things changed when creators were asking to go to the big race on Sunday. This is when Tarte managed to get a few extra tickets for the race on Sunday, and Kelly said that creators could choose to go whenever they wanted.
It could be that Jones had already said no to the trip before there were more tickets available, or she wasn’t given the option to switch her schedule. Either way, Kelly said that there were no hard feelings to any of the creators.
Some people have criticized these influencers for complaining about getting an all-expenses-paid trip. TikToker @briannachickenfry, who was also on the Tarte Island trip in what she claims was the “worst room,” argued it’s “what influencing is” in a TikTok. Brianna admitted the tiered room system was “weird” but necessary because of the villa’s layout, and she said she felt like Tarte was making a business call by putting creators with the highest following in the most luxe rooms, because those videos would get more eyes on them. Since she had less followers than some of the other girls on the trip, it made sense to her that she got the basement “dungeon” room with a broken toilet.
Of course, that still doesn’t address the initial criticism that both Victor and Jones brought up about not feeling like they were being treated equally as BIPOC creators. While Kelly may want to include as many creators as possible on Tarte’s influencer trips, it’ll be interesting to see if the brand changes their approach on its next one.
[ad_2]
Source link
