Last week when I was making my purchase at M.A.C cosmetics, the first thing that the sales asked me was what is your last name. She continued on to ask for my first name, my email and my address. Finding it strange that she upright asked me for all my personal information without the slightest explanation as to what it was for, my Sauder sixth sense kicked in and I asked her what this information was for. Her explanation was that they had a rewards program where you receive a free lipstick for every six M.A.C packages you return. I thought to myself: isn’t that a smart way of obtaining consumer statistics to help with marketing while the customer happily thinks that they are simply earning themselves free lipstick.

When I went home, I did some research on M.A.C and I found this very resourceful blog called Viral Marketing that talks about how brands market themselves. In its blog about M.A.C, it outlined all the different strategies that the company used to create brand positioning, brand marketing and product differentiation. After reading this blog, I realized that the “Back to M.A.C” project was actually a marketing tactic that uses our commitment to the environment in returning packages to justify our need to buy more M.A.C products and for them to gain access to our personal information. Beware of greenwashing.

Resources:

http://marketingdope.blogspot.ca/2007/11/mac-cosmetics-story.html

Images from: http://www.maccosmetics.com/giving_back/btm_return_packaging.tmpl

http://irosado.blogspot.ca/2009/09/history-of-mac-cosmetics-inc.html