Recent Social Issues

One of the most recent controversies involved M.A.C.  One of their spokeswomen, Sandra Bernhard, was the lead in an online advertisement for M.A.C and said somethings that were very offensive to a lot of the brands customers.  The brand agreed that a lot of the statements were a bad representation of the Estee Lauder brand as a whole and redid the video to exclude the political statements.  I have posted a link to the original video so you can watch it for yourself.  The Estee Lauder corporation eventually removed the video (although it is still on youtube) and publicly apologized.

Another controversy surrounding the company involves Ronald Lauder.  He is partly Jewish and supports Israel activities.  Pro-palestinian activists started to boycott the brand because of its support to Israel.  They then formed the "Estee Slaughter" campaign which came up with products like bloody hand cream and kill me lip bomb.  They gave out free samples of these products while boycotting a Macy's store.  I have attached the full article.

Estee Lauder did not make any comments that I could find about this issue.  They should have done more to understand other's concerns.

http://www.quitpalestine.org/esteeslaughter/estee.html

These are just some of the more recent issues that have been in the media with Estee Lauder, but over the years there have been many other little controversies surrounding the company.  When there is a company with such power as Estee Lauder, issues with the public are inevitable.