This week Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness brand Goop launched its first permanent New York store following the success of its permanent location in Brentwood, California and several pop up shops including a location in London. However, with a high came a low as it came to light that Goop has been reported to the UK advertising Watchdogs over ‘potentially dangerous’ health advice.
So what is Goop? The brand which started out in 2008 as a newsletter Gwyneth published from her kitchen has grown into a $250 million company, with around 2.4 million unique visitors to the website each month. According to the Goop website it is a lifestyle brand with its roots in content across 6 key pillars: wellness, travel, food, beauty, style and work. But Goop has also branched out from simply creating content into making product, they have created a skincare line, regimen based vitamin program, fragrances and fashion essentials.
Goop has seen controversies from its inception, as they wanted to create aspirational and exclusive content. The ethic being that sometimes having beautiful things costs money, and that just because some people cannot afford that it doesn’t mean no one can and that no one should want it.
However, it wasn’t until 2014 and the introduction of Elise Loehnen to the team that Goop began to resemble the thing it is now – a combination of completely legitimate wellness advice and more extreme magical thinking. Elise isn’t just interested in wellness she is obsessed with it, which has lead to the stranger aspects of Goop developing. But, the weirder Goop got the more its readers rejoiced, and of course the more Goop was criticised.
This criticism, in turn, turned Goop into a cause and Gwyneth into its martyr, with every negative story pushing more and more people onto the site.
This week The Good Thinking Society listed 113 examples of Goop’s advertising which it says are in breach of the law. One of these products “The Mother Load” lists 69% of the daily value of Vitamin A for pregnant women. But the NHS and World Health Organisation advise against women taking supplements containing vitamin A during pregnancy. Laura Thompson, project manager at The Good Thinking Society, said:
“It is shocking to see the sheer volume of unproven claims made by Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop about their products, especially given that some of their health advice is potentially dangerous.” She continued saying: “Being a celebrity does not exempt someone from abiding by the advertising law here in the UK.”
This is not the first time Goop has had issues. They recently settled a $145,000 lawsuit with California prosecutors over their advertising of a jade and rose quartz egg which they claimed could balance hormones and regulate menstrual cycles.
After their second issue of Goop magazine the company broke off their relationship with publishing giant Condé Nast because Condé sticks to “traditional rules” which wouldn’t allow Goop’s family of doctors and healers to go unchallenged in their recommendations.
However, Goop has recently taken steps such as hiring a lawyer to vet all claims on the site and a full-time fact checker. Is this a way to avoid more lawsuits or is Goop developing and learning from past mistakes?
But is it even down to Goop to fact check? Surely the final decision on whether to buy or use something Goop recommends will always be made by the individual reader, and part of being an informed consumer is doing your own research. Further, as Gwyneth pointed out “we are never making statements”, effectively nothing that Goop says is said as fact, Goop simply offers an opinion.
On their website Goop claim to ‘never recommend something that we don’t love. We value your trust above all things.’ Although they face a lot of criticism it is clear the brand wants what’s best for its consumers – after all everything they recommend and produce is designed to improve the lives of their readers. Further, Goop quietly donates a portion of its profits to charitable causes such as The Edible Schoolyard and Pencils of Promise, a fact that goes a long way to bat off critics who say this is simply a money-making operation.
Is it right that Gwyneth and Goop are seen as a joke, has the brand brought it upon itself with poor advertising standards and extreme beliefs? Or should we be supporting a woman who has built up a multi million-dollar business through sharing products and opinions she believes will help improve the lives of other women?
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/magazine/big-business-gwyneth-paltrow-wellness.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/29/gwyneth-paltrows-goop-reported-to-uk-watchdogs-overadvertising.html
https://www.glossy.co/beauty/goop-opens-first-permanent-store-in-new-york-city
