Beauty influencer does the maths on Mecca’s ’50-Cent Face’ cost per wear campaign – and you won’t believe the outcome: ‘Holy grail of rip offs’

Beauty influencer Jill Clark has set Mecca on fire with a sizzling five-minute video in which she labels the beauty giant’s new ’50-Cent Face’ campaign a ‘job of shame’.

In her video, which has been viewed 684,000 times as of Friday, Jill labeled the campaign “the holy grail of all Mecca Max scammers.”

Mecca Max is the Australian beauty retailer’s popular cosmetics line.

The campaign, which launched in November last year, promotes Mecca Max’s affordability and claims customers can get a full makeover for less than 50p a day – with ‘change in the car console, at the bottom of the bag or wedged in’. between your sofa cushions’.

“I was already angry at this campaign, but it’s the disclaimer that led to my discovery,” Jill said.

The disclaimer on Mecca’s website states that the cost per wear is based on an “average daily recommended usage amount.”

“Mecca, how exactly did you quantify this?” Jill cooked. ‘Because the title of your article is ‘We’ve done the math“I did that too, and I’m going to show you what I found.”

The first was the brand’s Off Duty Serum Skin Tint, which Mecca says retails for $32, with a cost per wear of $0.09.

Based on these figures, Jill says this would mean there are 356 applications in the entire 30ml bottle.

‘According to your disclaimer that this is based on daily recommended use, for 356 uses in this bottle that would equate to a single use of 0.084 ml.’

The 26-year-old, who has a professional background in logistics, then used a 1ml syringe to demonstrate how much product Mecca advises customers to use for their ‘full face’.

“The amount of product used by paid influencers to promote this campaign is demonstrably much more than 0.084ml,” Jill told Ny Breaking Australia as she held up the microscopic blob of makeup.

“That’s false advertising.”

Mecca Max confirmed that they used paid influencers to create the campaign and that while some of those influencers used scales to measure the amount of product they used, others only followed “general guidelines.”

“The damn part isn’t even the amount of product, it’s the fact that this has a six-month expiration date,” Jill continued.

“That means that with 356 uses, even if you wore this every day, it would still expire before you had a chance to validate the 9 cents charge per use.”

She then measured Mecca Max’s Off Duty Blush Stick, which retails for $20 and contains 6.5 grams of product.

Mecca listed the cost per wear as $0.03, meaning the stick can supposedly be used 667 times before it runs out, with each use being 0.009g.

“That unit is so small I can’t even show you what it looks like,” Jill said.

‘What I can tell you is that this product has a shelf life of 18 months (548 days), which again means this will expire before you even have a chance to validate Mecca’s cost per wear.’

“I used to buy these religiously and not once did it last longer than three months.”

In a statement to Ny Breaking, Mecca claimed that all products used in the campaign have a ‘period after opening’ (PAO), which is ‘essentially a shelf life after opening – and not an expiration date’.

“MECCA MAX’s PAO dates are conservative and the expiration date will depend on how the product is stored,” a Mecca Max spokesperson said.

They added that while the PAO does not have an expiration date, the products “may start to become a little less effective.”

In her final example, Jill took the $26 Whip Lash Tubing Mascara, which contains 8 ml of product. At Mecca’s cost of $0.26 per wear, Jill said this equates to 100 uses in the tube, using 0.08ml of mascara each time.

‘Let’s be honest: there’s no chance you’re going to get 100 percent benefit from this. If you tried to use it a hundred times, this would be drier than the Sahara,” she said.

“Mecca, I would really like you to show us exactly what 0.08 ml of mascara looks like on the eyelashes.”

In the 1,800 comments on Jill’s TikTok so far, Aussies praised the influencer for her attention to detail and said they broke out the popcorn in anticipation of Mecca’s response.

“This is journalism,” one user wrote.

“Jillie, I’m afraid you absolutely ate this,” said another.

“The marketing team would hate you now, I love this.”

‘Thank you for taking the time to raise awareness of this! I stopped shopping in Mecca over a year ago when I noticed my powder went up in price by over $15 in one year,” said another.

A spokesperson for Mecca Max said six of the brand’s “internal product experts” were asked to create everyday makeup looks and used precision scales to measure the amount of makeup they used – and then “divided it by the product price” .

“We know that everyone uses products differently depending on their preferences and skin type, so we took the average amount,” they said.

This isn’t the first time Jill has publicly interacted with Mecca’s publicity team.

The Sydney-based make-up enthusiast went viral last May with a video comparing Mecca Max products to name-brand alternatives, claiming they contained ‘literally half’ the amount of make-up.

In response, Mecca said that Jill had been “quite selective” with the products she chose to feature in her video, and that they had higher prices due to their “superior formula and/or packaging.”

“If I have been selective with the products I have chosen, I would say they have been selective with the information they have released with this campaign and the way they do their marketing,” she told Ny Breaking Australia on Friday.

“Mecca has been the zeitgeist of the Australian beauty community for so long that there doesn’t seem to be any kind of checks and balances there.”

‘It’s like they think we’re stupid. I hope this irritates you as consumers as much as it irritates me.’

Additionally, she said most influencers working on the Mecca campaign used “four to five times” more products than advertised.

Jill has been named to the Sephora Squad, but told Ny Breaking Australia that the brand relationship with Mecca’s biggest competitor has no influence on these videos.

“I have never been paid by Sephora and they absolutely do not pay me in any way to create this type of content,” she told Ny Breaking Australia, noting that the European cosmetics company only contacted her after the videos blew up.

“My goal is never to deter people from shopping at a particular retailer because of these issues, but rather to create awareness of the situation. As consumers we often don’t look behind the scenes.’

Melbournian Jo Horgan started Mecca Cosmetica in 1997 to fill a Sephora-sized gap in the undeserved Australian beauty market. She picked a handful of the hottest products that weren’t available in Australia and signed them to exclusive distribution contracts.

Today, Mecca has more than 100 physical stores in Australia and New Zealand and the company’s most recently recorded annual turnover was $688.9 million, as of December 2021.