L’Oreal is reputed to be the most dominant cosmetics company. Recently however, questions were raised concerning “unethical practices” (article), related to L’Oréal’s advertising. The French based company was accused of racial discrimination when it came to recruiting models/temporary agents selling shampoo products. Allegations highlighted that L’Oréal recruited, thinking that white models/agents put more appeal to the public into buying their products. Cosmetics products, aim to increase skin glow, provide shinier hair etc and anti-racial groups said L’Oréal recruited with the thought that white skinned individuals would more visually reflect the features their products would deliver. L’Oréal was found guilty by the Paris appeal court, fined €30,000. But it makes one wonder that despite processes of globalization and increased integration amongst people, with exchange of ideas, innovations, and technology that such mindset presents itself as a deciding factor concerning recruitment in the world’s biggest cosmetics company! This topic lands itself in the center of business ethics, the thin line dividing between right and wrong, something L’Oréal failed to see, but can we really blame L’Oréal since it was attempting to increase sales through “selective recruitment” of people to stronger highlight its products. Is it really a thin line, or a blur, so ambiguous that companies such as L’Oréal couldn’t see it coming?
Article
Sage, Adam. “L’Oreal found guilty of racism in shampoo ads.” (2009): September 15, 2010.
Image
“L’Oréal Logo.” Enjoy France. Web. 15 Sep 2010.
This blog identifies two points about the hiring of models for advertising of L’Oréal beauty products. The first being racial discrimination, and the other is whether L’Oréal were just trying to hire the type of models that they believed would create the greatest number of sales, in other words the “right person for the job”.
Having looked into this case further L’Oréal racially discriminated against any non-white female applicants to advertise it’s Fructis Style shampoo line in supermarkets outside Paris. The company specifically requested only white women for the advertising job which in my opinion, is clearly racial discrimination. According to the UK Guardian “One woman working in the recruitment firm involved said foreign-sounding names or photos showing a candidate was of Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian or other African origin would ensure candidates were eliminated.” Another said: “I once had a good woman candidate but she was non-white. I had to ask someone to pretend that our list was full. It was hard.” In my mind It sounds like L’Oréal don’t think women of different ethnicities are good enough to model and promote their hair product.
L’Oréal formed an international diversity policy in 2005 and their website shows they have received many diversity initiative awards. The company use a computerised system to process all job applications received through the website where some information such as gender, age and nationality are deleted to avoid recruiters discriminating against certain applicants. It seems they have affirmative action policies in place when recruiting employees but it looks like these policies don’t (or didn’t) reach as far as the recruitment of models. Affirmative action policies should be in place for all areas of employment within the corporation. As the Dell Computer Corporation stated “companies that diversify work force and supply bases are more successful in gaining access to multicultural markets”. (www.dell.com). Maybe L’Oréal would benefit by having a quota system in place to hire models. Tom L Beauchamp (2004) points out that a quota is a numerically expressible goal that one is able to pursue with good faith and due diligence. Having some sort of quota would stop L’Oréal being perceived as being racially discrimitory as they would have to hire a certain percentage of ethnic models.
In regards to the second point made -perhaps L’Oréal only choose white females to advertise shampoo because they know from past experience that sales will be greater., In other words white females are the are the right women for the job. Even if this is true, surely they would be better off if they made a little less money by showing their appreciation for cultural diversity to target a wider range of customers. L’Oréal is the largest cosmetics company in the world (www.wikipedia.com) and the models are the first thing customers see. Showing a bit of ethnic diversity with advertising has surely got to be more rewarding then making a few more dollars. There are many other cosmetic companies out there and for L’Oréal to continue to be the most successful they need to be more open to hiring different ethnicities.
I don’t think that L’Oréal were simply hiring the right person for the job in this instance as they didn’t even bother to try and interview non-white women. From looking at the company’s website and reading through L’Oréal’s diversities overview report it seem they have fantastic action policies in place, however they have made a huge mistake by not applying these policies to all areas of recruitment.