A Black Female-Owned Company Was Flooded With 1-Star Reviews By White Women After A Target Commercial Feature
This week an online infantry of women unleashed an unwarranted backlash after a commercial for the popular plant-based feminine care line Honey Pot, was featured by Target. The bitter comments ultimately forced the brand’s founder Beatrice Dixon, to deliver a response that was not so sweet but really sticks.
An ad by Target featuring The Honey Pot Company and its owner launched a trove of trolls to claim that it was racist.
The ad, which has been running since early February, recently caught the attention of white women online who didn’t like a portion of the ad which sees Dixon promote her brand and praise Target for spotlighting a Black business.
“The reason why it’s so important for The Honey Pot to do well is so the next black girl that comes up with a great idea — she can have a better opportunity,” Dixon says in the commercial.
Dixon’s comments highlighted a major issue for black women and minorities in business.
As pointed out by CNN “Venture capitalists identify and finance the innovators who create our future. But there’s a problem with how some VCs are identifying the next big thing: They’re leaving out female and ethnically diverse entrepreneurs.”
It’s why Target’s decision to feature Dixon as part of their “Founders We Believe In” campaign is such a big deal. It’s also why it’s so disappointing that the comment, which was meant to be empowering and meant for Black women, was hijacked by a group of white women reviewers and turned into something about them.
Women on the review site Trustpilot quickly took to the comments and rating buttons to lower Honey Pot reviews.
According to a spokesman for Trustpilot who spoke to CNN the review site received almost 18,000 reviews between Sunday night and Monday morning. Reviews became so bad that posts were blocked by artificial intelligence filters because they contained hate speech and staff members of the site to manually remove offensive comments. Honey Pot’s dropped to two stars. Trust pilot has turned off the ability to make reviews for the company, but there are dozens of reviews of Target from people who vowed to never shop there again because of the commercial.
“Our customers were the ones that really got on top of it,” Dixon told CNN explaining that the company’s ratings ultimately jumped back up to a 4.9 in less than a day. “I think one of our customers put it up as a social media post. And then it completely got turned around.”
Dixon has also, needlessly, assured that Honey Pot is for everyone.”Our tagline is ‘Made by humans with vaginas, for humans with vaginas,'” she said. “That means anybody.”D
In response to the backlash, Target issued a statement in support of Honey Pot.
“Target has a longstanding commitment to empowering and investing in diverse suppliers that create a broad variety of products for our guests,” a Target spokesman said in a statement. “We’re proud to work with Bea Dixon and The Honey Pot team to highlight Bea’s journey to build her brand and bring her products to Target. We’re aware of some negative comments about the campaign, which aren’t in line with the overwhelmingly positive feedback we’ve received from guests who love and have been inspired by Bea’s story.”
