Over the past two years or so, tallow has made a comeback, although that might not be the best word to describe it. Prior to 2022, the only time the word came up in conversation was usually regarding candles. Growing up in Western Pennsylvania, I vaguely associated tallow with the Amish, but that was about it.
Now it’s unavoidable. Tallow is shilled on podcasts, demonstrated in YouTube videos, and appears in every other post in my Instagram feed. Its health benefits (real or exaggerated) are touted. It’s the staunch ally in the fight against seed oils, which have been demonized in proportion to tallow’s ascendency. I buy tallow from my local butcher and use it regularly to give steaks and extra beefiness. No doubt, my initial decision to try it out was influenced by one of these channels talking about it, proving that advertising does work.
Tallow skincare brands are springing up overnight like beefy mushrooms. Some brands are professional, taking care in choosing their typefaces, creating enticing packaging, and making websites that are easy to navigate. It’s heartening to know that not every entrepreneur is relegating their brand-building to a Canva template or their nephew. Other brands don’t understand what branding is, and it shows.
All offer the same benefit regardless of brand name: Glowing skin, or in the case of tallow sunscreen, not-glowing skin. And there are scores of tallow sunscreen brands. More than I ever thought necessary. The smarter ones avoid the culture war and are able to appeal to both the paranoid anti-vax left and ultra trad-right caricatures, as well as the apolitical who’re just tired of smelling like weird chemicals and want to try something different.
I fall into the latter category. I exercise outside, even in summer, which can be brutal in Nashville. I slather up with whatever SPF is in the house and always feel like I need to go through a detox shower when I get back. No amount of soap will get that chemical smell off my skin. I showered last night and still smell like it. The kind I use is natural (a word that means nothing in marketing) and only contains zinc oxide. According to a metabolic nutritionist, my zinc level is elevated beyond where it should be.
Despite this, I’ve yet to pull the tallow sunscreen trigger. But I know which brands I’ll be avoiding. I’m two decades into my advertising career and still don’t understand why companies would risk alienating half their audience to take a political stance on a hot-button social topic that has nothing to do with their products. If the past few years are any indication, the consumers are over it, too.
It started with Sleeping Giants bullying brands off of Fox News, but then conservatives got involved. As a result of their pressure campaigns, John Deere recently announced it would go back to focusing on professional development rather than pushing societal change. Bud Light will never recover the audience it lost from its Dylan Mulvaney mini-campaign. If long-established brands are dealing with a consumer reckoning from both sides of the political extreme, why would a start-up brand with near-zero awareness decide to pick up that mantle?
I was following one tallow brand on Instagram and found their mom-and-pop story compelling, even endearing, at least at first. Their comms strategy was non-existent. For every heartfelt video apologizing for the delay in shipment, or excited post showing how they made their products, there were three memes about the “Demonrats.” I briefly considered contacting them to see if I could help. But then one particularly odious post took a sharp turn into anti-Semitism.
The brand posted a direct message from someone asking if they shipped their products to Israel. Their answer was essentially, “LOL hell no, and we all know why, wink wink.” Unsurprisingly, they lost hundreds of followers that day, including me. Rather than opt for some self-reflection, they intensified and said they’ll always speak “the truth.” Good luck with that. The hypocrisy isn’t lost on me that a so-called clean brand would hold toxic opinions. C’est la boeuf.
Almost all PR nightmares can be easily avoided. All a brand has to do is keep their political opinions to themselves and follow the advice my journalist dad told me in an attempt to provide wisdom at the beginning of my advertising career: focus on the product.