Uoma beauty has launched a campaign surrounding Carnival, a celebration in many countries where they dress up in big, colorful, and vibrant feathers while dancing in the street. The campaign, Black Magic Carnival collection includes influencer sponsorships from makeup artists and influencers, Jackie Aina and Patrick Starr. Although Carnival isn’t only celebrated in Caribbean countries, the Caribbean is heavily associated with Carnival. So, when @QuintinMarcell voiced their opinions about Caribbean influencers not being apart of the campaign, it got the attention of Jackie Aina, @jackieaina, herself.
Jackie Aina took to twitter to acknowledge the underrepresentation of Caribbean influencers and made things right. She went back to Uoma Beauty and reached an agreement on letting her choose four Caribbean influencers to participate in the campaign.
The reason I bring up this particular interaction was to show how this was a perfect example of why using influencers is good for representation. Influencers build their relationships with their followers by constantly communicating and interacting with them. When influencers are doing partnerships or sponsorships, they become the bridge between the company and publics. Jackie Aina being able to effectively communicate an issue with the campaign to the company and fixing it in the matter of hours is something a lot of businesses with social media are struggling with.
Another reason I point this particular situation out is a problem that is a daily battle on social media for campaigns, and that’s representation. It’s important to make sure when doing a campaign with cultural elements, you represent everyone associated with it. Cultural appropriation has consistently been something that brands have been under fire and lack of diversity in the PR team contributes to this problem. There is not one aspect of a culture that isn’t important and to assume that, is what makes campaigns based on a culture a hard miss for companies.
Having Jackie Aina deal with the situation helped and harmed them in different ways. It helped resolve the issue and become more inclusive, but it also made Uoma beauty look like they weren’t able to solve it on their own. Made people think that the company itself wouldn’t have been able to respond. Either way, it’s nice to see businesses listen and try to make it right to their publics, and there isn’t anything to be ashamed of if the person that made it happen was an influencer.
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