‘Shame job’: Beauty influencer blasts Mecca over 50 cent makeup claim

A popular Australian influencer has taken aim at a beauty retail giant, slamming the brand over its new ‘50 cent’ makeup claim.

A beauty influencer has taken aim at one of Australia’s biggest beauty retailers, accusing them of misleading customers with a recent campaign.

This week, Jill Clark shared a five minute long video in which she branded Mecca’s new ‘50-Cent Face’ campaign a “shame job”, pointing out what she believed was false advertising from the beauty giant.

The campaign, launched in November last year, is aimed at highlighting the affordability of the retailer’s in-house brand, Mecca Max, and claims that, with a select few products, customers can achieve a full face of makeup for less than 50 cents per day.

The claim is based on the cost per wear of each of the products, which is based on a daily recommended usage amount.

However, Ms Clark claims there are some serious flaws with the campaign and she has decided to share them with her 144,000 followers on TikTok.

In the video, she questioned how exactly Mecca “quantified” its daily recommended usage amount, revealing she, with the help of Chat GPT, had run the numbers on some of the products used throughout the campaign.

First up was the brand’s Off Duty Serum Skin Tint, which sells for $32 for a 30ml bottle, with a cost per wear of $0.09, according to Mecca.

Ms Clark deduced that at this cost per wear price, it would mean there are 356 uses in the entire botte.

“Now, according to your disclaimer of this being based off daily recommended usage, for 356 uses in this bottle, that would equate to one single use being 0.084ml,” she said.

In the video, Ms Clark showed viewers how much 0.084ml was. Picture: jillie_clarkk/TikTok

The influencer has called the Mecca campaign a ‘shame job’. Picture: jillie_clarkk/TikTok

The influencer then used a 1ml syringe to demonstrate how much product Mecca is directing customers to use for their “full face”.

“The f***ed up part is not even the amount of product, it’s the fact that this has a six month expiration. Which means that at 356 uses, even if you wore this every single day, it would still expire before you had a chance to validate the 9 cent cost per wear,” Ms Clark said.

In a statement to news.com.au, Mecca claimed that all the products used in the campaign have a ‘period after opening date’ (PAO), which is “essentially a ‘best before’ date after opening - not an expiry date”.

“MECCA MAX’s PAO dates are conservative, and the expiry will depend on how the product is stored,” a Mecca Max spokesperson said.

According to an article posted on Mecca’s website in March, the POA indicates how many months after opening that the preservative system in the product will be able to fight off bacteria with maximum strength.

The preservative system doesn’t become immediately ineffective after this period, but it “might start to become a little bit less effective”.

As a general guide, the article states that any products that come close and have direct contact with your eyes, such as eyeliners and mascaras, shouldn’t be used for longer than three to six months.

Powders can be good for between one and two years and cream products, such as foundation and lipstick “tend to stay strong for up to two years”, depending on how they are packaged.

In the video, Ms Clark also referenced Mecca Max’s Of Duty Blush Stick, with retails for $20 and has 6.5 grams of product.

At a cost per wear of $0.03, Ms Clark calculated it could be used 667 times before it ran out, with each use being 0.009g.

“That unit is so small that I can’t even show you what that looks like,” she said.

This product has a POA of 18 months, which is approximately 548 days.

Next up was the Whip Lash Tubing Mascara, priced at $26 for 8ml of products. At $0.26 per wear, Ms Clark estimated roughly 100 uses in the tube for 0.08ml of product for each application.

“Let’s be so for real, there is not a chance in hell you are getting one hundred uses out of this. This would be drier than the Sahara Desert if you tried to use it one hundred times,” she said.

“Mecca, I would really like you to show us exactly what 0.08ml of mascara looks like on the eyelashes.”

A Mecca Max spokesperson said that, in order to validate the measurements used for the campaign, six of the brand’s “internal product experts” were asked to create an everyday makeup look using some Mecca max products.

“We took their average usage amounts, measured on a precision scale (a weighing device that provides high level of accuracy when measuring minuscule amounts), and divided them by the product price,” the Mecca Max spokesperson said.

“We know everyone uses products differently depending on their preferences and skin type, which is why we took the average amount.”

Mecca has over 100 stores across Australia and New Zealand.

The spokesperson said the Off Duty Blush Stick was used by each of the six product experts and the average weight came to 0.01g per use, which is just marginally above Ms Clark’s calculation. This is how the brand came up with the $0.03 per use figure.

In her video, Ms Clark also referenced some of content created by other influencers in conjunction with the 50 cent face campaign, claiming there are instances where appear to use significantly more product than the daily recommended usage amount outlined by Mecca.

“You greenlit content for this campaign that shows people using four to five times the amount of product than what actually validates your figures on this campaign. That’s false advertising,” she said.

A Mecca spokesperson confirmed to news.com.au that the brand engaged and paid influencers as part of the campaign, confirming that all of those creators who were paid were only wearing Mecca Max products in their content.

Mecca said the paid influencers were provided with the products, along with a cost breakdown to create their looks.

“One of the paid influencers even completed their own measurements using a micro-scale, to validate their 50-Cent Face,” the spokesperson said.

However, they noted that not all influencers had access to precise measurement tools, so the brand provided “general guidance” to help them create their makeup looks.

“This is why there may be some variance in coverage and may result in a very small difference to the cost of the look depending on how much of the products were used,” the spokesperson said.

Speaking to news.com.au, Ms Clark said she decided to look further into the campaign after being continuously sent and tagged in related content by her followers.

Ms Clark questioned why the Mecca campaign was greenlit. Picture: jillie_clarkk/TikTok

“The more I looked into it, the more I realised that there is actually a story here and there is something that does need to be told,” she said.

The beauty influencer said the initially issue she took with the move was that Mecca was releasing a price focused campaign in he cost of living crisis, but then she began noticing other details she found concerning.

She also confirmed to news.com.au that she is in a “non-exclusive agreement” in Sephora, one of Mecca’s biggest competitors.

However, Ms Clark said she doesn’t make money from promoting Sephora online, describing herself instead as an “affiliate” of the brand.

“So there’s no sort of obligations to post about Sephora. There’s no agreements in that respect,” she said.

In the video criticising the Mecca campaign, Ms Clark does not mention Sephora or compare the two brands in any way.

At the end of the clip, which has been viewed more than 600,000 times and received over 1700 comments, the beauty influencer questioned how the campaign was allowed to go ahead with the perceived issues highlighted in the video.

“It goes without saying that no brand, whether it’s makeup or clothing, can dictate to you your personal cost per wear, that is up to the consumer’s individual behaviour. And, as one of the biggest beauty retailers in the country, I would hazard a guess that you understand consumer behaviour quite well. So, how did this campaign get greenlit?” she asked.

“It’s like they think we are stupid. I hope as consumers this pisses you off just as much as it pisses me off.”

This is not the first time Ms Clark has called out the beauty retail giant.

Last year she made a TikTok video comparing Mecca Max products to name-brand alternatives and found they contained “literally half” the amount of product.

In one of her multiple examples in the video, she compared the Mecca Max brow pencil to the Anastasia Brow Wiz.

The former retails for $20 for 0.04g of product and the latter retails for $41 for 0.085g of product.

“Mecca Max is known for being the more affordable option. It’s not,” she said.

“Because that’s the same amount of dollars per gram, for a far superior formula.”

At the time, a Mecca spokeswoman told The Daily Telegraph that Ms Clark had been “quite selective” about the products she chose to compare.

She said some of the products featured in the video were more expensive because “we’ve chosen a superior formula and/or product packaging, which can increase the cost and therefore the price of a product”.

Originally published as ‘Shame job’: Beauty influencer blasts Mecca over 50 cent makeup claim