This week’s roundup covers what Maybelline’s tagline rebrand reveals about the risks of change without reading your audience, why Reddit’s new AI-powered review feature should be on every brand communicator’s radar and how e.l.f. Beauty turned an annual impact report into a genuine two-way conversation with its community.
Maybelline’s Tagline Rebrand Sparks a Debate
What happened: On Nov. 10, Maybelline New York unveiled what it called “the permanent evolution” of one of the most recognized taglines in beauty history. Gone is the 35-year-old “Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline.” In its place: “Maybe. We’re born with it. Maybe. It’s Maybelline.” The change swaps “she’s” for “we’re” in a nod to inclusivity and adds a period after each “maybe” to, in the brand’s words, transform ambiguity into a “statement of possibility,” per WWD.
The internet’s reaction? Swift backlash. Critics focused primarily on the punctuation—arguing that a standalone “Maybe.” reads as sarcasm or skepticism rather than confidence, per Slate. Allure’s editorial team called the original “one of the greatest beauty slogans ever,” noting that its “rhythm and satisfying payoff are now gone.” The backlash spans the political spectrum—some critics called it unnecessarily “woke,” while others simply argued the grammar doesn’t work, per Marketing Dive.
The business context matters. Maybelline has been navigating a crowded beauty market increasingly dominated by celebrity and influencer brands and recently slipped to third place in a key teen consumer survey. The brand did retire the original tagline in 2016 in favor of “Make It Happen,” then revived it in 2024—at which point 84% of consumers still remembered it, per New Beauty.
Communication takeaways: The Maybelline situation is a useful case study in what Erica Williams of Bold Vision PR calls the risk of overcorrecting.
“Modernizing a brand identity isn’t simply about reaching new audiences or driving revenue,” Williams says. “It's also about understanding how a change could affect the trust, recognition, and loyalty a brand has already established.”
The tagline change is a reminder that brands need to consider how audiences will interpret an evolution rather than just relying on internal assumptions about what consumers want.
Williams says PR professionals should help brands navigate change by conducting a risk assessment before introducing shifts to brand messaging.
“This means assessing how new and existing audiences might perceive the change, examining the recognition and emotional connection associated with established brand elements and reviewing consumer feedback and community conversations,” she says.
Communicators need to determine: does this strengthen the brand position or alienate its core audience? Williams notes change itself isn’t the problem.
“Brands should make room for new ideas while preserving the qualities that make them recognizable and trusted,” she says. “More than a new tagline, consumers need clear brand messaging that reflects the brand's values as the company evolves.”
Reddit Reviews: What It Means When User Conversations Become a Product
What happened: This week Reddit launched “Reddit Reviews,” a new feature that uses AI to organize user conversations about products into structured review summaries—covering what people like, dislike and what trade-offs to consider before buying.
TechCrunch reports that the feature is rolling out to all U.S. users, starting with around 10,000 products across categories including electronics, video games, health and beauty, home and garden and fashion and apparel. Users can search for a product, see a “what people are saying” summary, view a visual breakdown of positive versus negative sentiment and filter comments by topic or click through to the original conversation.
The timing seems deliberate—it launches ahead of the holiday shopping season, when product research spikes. It also follows Reddit’s separate announcement that it is shifting toward a logged-in experience as search traffic from Google declines, per TechCrunch. Reddit Reviews is partly a response to that reality: if people are going to do product research, Reddit wants to be the destination, not just a source Google references.
However, turning casual community conversations into structured product review features now makes Reddit a more attractive target for fake reviews and brand manipulation than it was when those conversations were simply scattered across threads. Reddit points to its community rules, its moderator network and its recent measures to combat automated abuse and spam as safeguards—but the tension between authentic community and monetizable product is one the platform will have to actively manage.
Communication takeaways: The launch changes the stakes around Reddit as a channel. Brand conversations on Reddit have always mattered for reputation, but they were largely organic and hard to tackle at scale. A structured AI-summarized review feature raises the value of what Reddit’s communities say—and raises the risk of what happens when those communities say something negative. Brands that have been ignoring Reddit may want to reconsider.
Nikki Balles, Founder and Chief Brand Officer at The Brand House Agency, says the reviews are definitely uncharted territory for the platform and that they have the potential to shift influence away from, well, influencers.
“Consumers are becoming increasingly aware that what they’re seeing isn’t always an authentic POV,” Balles says.
She notes that this development creates an opportunity and risk for brands.
“Genuine experiences are incredibly valuable, but they also put enormous pressure on brands to deliver on their promises without the fluff,” she says. “I’m interested to see whether this sticks, how these reviews evolve and how they eventually influence conversations across social platforms and AI search.”
e.l.f. Beauty’s CEO Is Giving Out His Number
What happened: e.l.f. Beauty published its fifth annual Impact Report on Nov. 12, and this year it came with something unusual: the CEO’s phone number.
The brand launched “Dial ‘0’ for Zero Distance,” a browser-based hotline that connects callers directly to CEO Tarang Amin—not to talk about mascara, but to hear which of six causes they want the company to prioritize. Callers choose from women’s health, fair and ethical business, empowering the next generation, women and girls in sports, diverse representation in leadership and survivor rights and advocacy.
The activation builds through next week. On Nov. 13, Amin will pick up the phone live from 12 to 3 p.m. ET to speak directly with selected callers. On Nov. 19, e.l.f. opens its company Impact Town Hall to the public via LinkedIn Live and Twitch Live.
The report itself highlights measurable progress across those impact areas:
- e.l.f.’s board ranks in the top 1% of diverse boards at publicly traded U.S. companies; 58% of graduates from its board readiness program with the National Association of Corporate Directors have secured board placements
- Through rhode, e.l.f. Beauty’s portfolio is supporting a $5 million, three-year commitment to the Foundation for Women’s Health to advance research in historically underfunded areas
- Through its partnership with RIVET, e.l.f. is helping 100 young women changemakers across the UK and India access funding, training and mentorship
- Its Fair Trade Community Development Fund supported worker-led initiatives benefiting more than 1,600 people across healthcare, housing, transportation and other community needs
- In FY26, e.l.f. donated 4.8% of its FY25 net income to giving back
Communication takeaways: The “Dial ‘0’” activation is worth studying as an audience engagement model. Rather than publishing an impact report and waiting for press coverage, e.l.f. built a two-way mechanism around it—giving the audience a literal voice in shaping the brand’s priorities and a direct line to leadership. It’s the kind of move that turns a CSR document into a conversation, and a CEO into a spokesperson for community values rather than just company performance.
Samantha Critchell, Vice President of Corporate Communications at e.l.f., says the most important messaging goal in this campaign is for the community to know they are getting the “real deal” from the brand when discussing positivity, inclusivity and accessibility.
“The only way co-creation happens is through a two-way dialogue,” Critchell says. “The eagerness to have that conversation is why Zero Distance works. A willingness to take in feedback and then take action is the how. The who starts at the top of our organization: Tarang Amin is sending a signal by removing filters and barriers. We’ve put a simple, relatable and very human wrapper around it.”
Nicole Schuman is Managing Editor at PRNEWS.