FabFitFun sells subscription boxes filled with products befitting its cutesy name: a cable knit headband, matcha gummies, eyelash serum, a bedazzled handbag. Valued at roughly $1 billion, according to Crunchbase, the company has scaled with the discipline of a tech startup while seeking to project a soft, playful energy to its customers.
So it was curious this week that the firm decided to launch a new advertisement on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at a time when many brands have stepped away.
“Happy Holidays!” read the post. “FabFitFun is pledging an additional $100k of X advertising in support of its free speech ideals.” The ad promised new users a mystery gift worth at least $300 if they used an Elon Musk-inspired promo code: “GoFuckYourself.”
Musk used the same phrase in late November while publicly deriding advertisers that had paused spending on the platform.
FabFitFun’s customers did not appreciate the callback. Swarms of them began canceling their subscriptions and flooding a company forum with angry messages.
“Wow, who are the fucking idiots running this company who think showing public support for Musk and his alt-right FrEe sPeEcH moaning is a winning tactic to appeal to their primarily Gen Z and Millennial female customer base?” read one highly upvoted comment on FabFitFun’s Reddit page.
In a statement on Thursday, cofounders Katie Echevarria Rosen Kitchens, Michael Broukhim, and Daniel Broukhim apologized.
“Clearly, this was a mistake—a poorly thought out attempt to participate in a viral moment through a marketing test—and for that we take ownership and responsibility….The content and tone of the ad was out of place and out of character and is not representative of who we are as a brand.”
But a review of the Broukhims’ posts on X indicates that it was representative of their personal views.
In a Nov. 27 post, co-CEO Michael Broukhim thanked Musk for visiting Israel and called him “singular as a leader in our world.”
Three days prior, in response to a statement from RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Katya Zamolodchikova that was tacitly critical of Israel, he posted an unrelated screed against transgender activists.
“If we are committed to combatting evil, we have to do so wherever we see it. There are 3 particular evils of the trans movement,” the post began, going on to argue that “trans women playing women’s sports means no women’s sports” and that the trans movement “preys on impressionable youth.”
“There is nothing wrong with being trans. That’s your choice,” Broukhim concluded. “But the trans movement has gone far beyond its mandate to protect that right. It’s been co-opted by those who seek the destruction of our society and perpetuates these evils in service of that aim.”
Co-CEO Daniel Broukhim recently reposted several of Musk’s favored talking points, including one on Oct. 30 declaring, “The great wakening from woke has happened. This is good for civilization.”
Kitchens seems to be the outlier. In a forum post earlier in the week, she described herself as a “pretty active liberal” and said she did not like the “GoFuckYourself” advertisement.
“I do think it was meant to be a joke. The issue is that it was just not funny at all,” she added. “I know the team thought that it could be so outrageous that it could go viral.”
Michael Broukhim echoed that point in a separate post, as Modern Retail previously reported: “The ad we created was ham-handed and the profanity it introduced, particularly without the relevant context, is both out of place and out of character for our brand. For all that, we apologize.”
The advertisement was deleted.
M. Kim Saxton, professor of marketing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, said that companies making political statements need to understand their target audience.
“FabFitFun’s target is millennial women, who tend to lean left. So, an ad that not only supports a platform some find right-leaning but also use a coupon code of ‘go f*** yourself’ simply is out of touch,” she said.
Lauren Beitelspacher, a marketing professor at Babson College, noted that consumers used to boycott companies they found objectionable. Today, “instead of encouraging a brand to change, we just cancel them when we disagree with them.”
The challenge for some businesses, she continued, is that customers often “demand that brands take a stand now, especially related to social and political issues. Unfortunately, when a brand's stand misaligns with a consumer's belief, they run the risk of being canceled by that customer.”
FabFitFun is now working to stem its losses. According to screenshots posted to social media, users who request refunds are being told that the advertisement was made “in poor judgment” and are being asked to reconsider.
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