Lush or Hush?

16 Apr 2019

Depending on how much time you have to keep up-to-date on all of the digital news, you might have missed the news last week that cosmetics brand, Lush, have decided to close their numerous social media accounts.

What’s Happening?

Between Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Lush UK have a combined audience of over 1 million followers.

Lush announced the move last week as it was “tired of fighting with algorithms” and did not want to “pay to appear” in newsfeeds.

Last year, due to GDPR concerns, Wetherspoons decided to opt out of running social media for their pub chain, but this is a slightly different reason. Lush isn’t worried about falling foul of any privacy guidelines, they seem to want to create a new way of conversing with their audience, how this will be done is beyond us, but it will be interesting to see.

There are suggestions that instead of managing their own accounts Lush will capitalise on the growing influencer movement to market their products but without a central social “home” Lush could lose out on a tremendous amount of engagement with their core audience.

What does Hush think about this? We caught up with Digital Marketing Manager Chris and Business Development Director Rosie for their views on the move.

“It’s a big move, but I think it is crazy,” said Chris, “They have a huge audience across different platforms, their engagement statistics won’t be terrible, so I don’t know why they want to move away from their popular channels. Yes, if something didn’t work for them, then I would look to change things up, we have clients who only use certain channels to communicate with certain markets, but this isn’t the case”.

“In their market, working with influencers is key and should accompany their main social platforms and messages, so if they do start working with key influencers, it will help breach the gap”.

“Lush don’t want to pay to appear, they don’t have to, they have had lots of success over the years with their organic campaigns.”

Rosie added “As a bit of a personal fan of the Lush brand – in particular, the Snow Fairy range! – It seems a bit drastic to see them completely remove themselves from social media. I understand the frustrations against algorithms and paying to be seen, but their customers will surely want to see the brand doing their own thing?

I engage with influencer posts constantly, but this usually leads me to the brand’s own social channel first and then either to the physical shop or onto the website to browse or even buy”.

The digital marketing team at Hush will be keeping an eye out to see how Lush compensates with the lack of direct social outputs.

If you would like to discuss an upcoming social media campaign or need the team at Hush to manage your social media, get in touch with the team today!