When bashers threw lemons at her, Colourette Cosmetics CEO Nina Cabrera didn’t use them to just “make lemonade but to build a lemonade stand.”
Her words, not ours. More specifically, these were the words of a CEO who was able to raise over P1.6 million in sales for a noble cause, as of her recent post on Twitter.
On Monday, Nina posted a screenshot of her latest tabulated sales across all her online selling platforms, which amounted to over P1.6 million. This was after the CEO announced that her brand would be re-stocking its best-selling products and that 100% of its sales will be donated to the victims of typhoon Ulysses/Vamco.
But why did the CEO, of all people, use the hashtag “#boycottCOLOURETTEcosmetics” to promote her initiative? You see, unlike most generous gestures by private entities recently, hers had a slightly deeper reason beyond charity: to put her haters in their place.
Prior to the beauty brand spearheading its goal, Nina Cabrera had been very vocal about the government’s lack of a decent response to the handful of typhoons that battered the country in the past month.
She had also spoken stalwartly about the power of social media mileage. She states that self-proclaimed influencers should use their platform to start meaningful discussions on key social issues, instead of always playing it safe.
She also believes that brands shouldn’t be “cowards” that shy away from touchy topics, even if it means losing some of your patrons.
As expected from people who only see party lines, some netizens were enraged by her critical position and tried to trend the hashtag that the CEO herself jumped in on. Some even went so far as to spread false rumors about her product being unregistered, body-shame her, and even sexually harass her online.
But Nina stood her ground by fighting the fire with straight-up facts (and with confidence to boot!), all of which are well-documented on her TikTok account.
Speaking of documentation, she also shot down the critics who suggested she was only raising the funds because she got bashed. Here’s a quick FYI from the CEO:
“Again, please invest the same energy sa ating mga public officials. Hindi ‘yung hukay kayo [nang] hukay sa mga private individuals looking for their ‘ambag.’” And with that remark, we have become stans of Ms. Nina.
Seriously, though, she isn’t lying — when public officials fail at doing their job all while private entities keep doing them favors, it becomes more a responsibility than a right for brands to speak up against incompetence.
