Makeup Mishaps: e.l.f. & Matt Rife Controversy
It happened to American Eagle with Sydney Sweeney and now it's happened to e.l.f. in August of 2025, who were in hot water after releasing a makeup campaign with comedian Matt Rife and drag queen Heidi N Closet. It obviously didn’t sit well with people because Matt Rife has been controversial for some time due to making raunchy jokes about domestic violence. The backlash was significant, leading to e.l.f. Cosmetics posted an apology on Instagram, which didn’t go as well, but are we surprised?
What should they have done better to address the problem? Doing more research about the person they want to represent their brand could have been something they should have done, especially if the person has been in hot water before with the female demographic, which happens to be e.l.f. 's primary consumers. We can maybe even say they could have come up with a better apology since from their perspective, they were trying to be empathetic, but it didn't work out that way.
The message turned out to be very insensitive to the situation and the comments on their Instagram post agreed, not buying their excuses. In this case, they should have chosen someone else, but they didn’t. In crisis communication, they missed the mark entirely, even though they intended to be humorous by making fun of law firm commercials. The audience made note of how tone deaf the brand was in using someone who makes fun of domestic violence.
This is an example of how crisis PR was misused and how e.l.f. as a company should have taken more responsibility in their apology, which may have acknowledged that they should research the person more next time for future campaigns. Some consumers of e.l.f. might feel like the brand itself does a lackluster job of choosing its celebrity ambassador, trying to decide whether to buy products from e.l.f. or maybe not.
In the future, brands like e.l.f. should think wisely not only about what their commercials are going to be about, but more importantly, about doing thorough research to ensure that the person they believe is the best-rounded will do the best job of representing their company in order to avoid extreme backlash.
Although some people might indeed not still like the celebrity they choose, even if they don’t have controversies surrounding them, you still can’t please everyone, and that’s what doesn’t go away.
Bio: Hello there! My name is Bella Marino. I’m a senior here at CSUN, majoring in Journalism with an emphasis in Public Relations, hoping to get into the Entertainment or legal field of PR. I am a big movie fanatic, and I love learning about how films are developed, and just the overall post-production process is very fascinating to me. I’m also planning to continue my education after I graduate by attending UCLA Extension next fall, 2026, to earn a certificate in the Entertainment business.