Meet ‘Word of Mouth,’ the Online Beauty Review Site for and by Real People
As told to Irène Schrader
Graphic by Eden Anyabwile
The world of makeup and skincare is as vast as it is tricky. Learning about the different routines, ingredients and techniques that work is a subjective journey that feels confusing and even lonely at times. Truth be told, most of us don’t have the time to conduct in-depth research on products and companies’ ethical practices.
That’s where Word of Mouth (WoM) comes in. The organization is the passion project of four University of Pennsylvania students who aim to help make the field of beauty more accessible for normal people — like you and me — to navigate, while also consciously keeping brands accountable for their own social ethics. Last week, I had the pleasure to speak with the founder of WoM, Isabel Brito, who told me more about it:
It all started almost a year ago. I was a senior in college, and because of the pandemic, I ended up not being at school and going back home. I think that around that time, everyone was bored and looking for new interests, and I personally got super into skincare.
As I was getting into it, I started being reminded of what I hated about it in the first place; just how overwhelming and confusing everything about beauty was — not just with skincare, but makeup, too. I imagine you’ve had the experience, when you go to a store and you pick a product up the shelf and you read the back and you try to understand exactly what that product does and how it's gonna help you. It basically over-promises: it says it’s gonna do everything, and at the same time, it’s so vague that it says it’s not gonna do anything and you’re just confused.
Because it's like, unless you’re putting a lot of effort and you’re researching ingredients, it’s just — just pointless, a shot in the dark. As a consumer, walking into places like Sephora picking up whatever packaging that looked kind of nice and that was it. I started getting really frustrated with that.
Think of Yelp, but for beauty reviews. A place “where [people help people].” What distinguishes WoM from your average beauty review site is its emphasis on community, unlimited product assortments and reliability. Their idea is for users to create an account and form a trustworthy social circle on the website with people who have actually bought the products they review: “the reliability of reviews on [some] websites are questionable. You can see, for example, on Sephora, the percentage of people writing reviews who have verifiably bought that product. Sometimes, this percentage is very low… Same [goes for] company websites, I’ve always wondered whether those reviews were made by people or the company.”
Like a social media platform, everyone on WoM can follow and interact with one another and bookmark products. Moreover, WoM goes beyond a store, in that it’s constantly growing the assortment of products available for review. “Our idea is to be a one-stop shop for literally all products that exist,” Brito says. The website is coupled with its social media feeds — including a seriously pretty Instagram feed — and a newsletter that “[brings] in the empowerment side that goes beyond [the products themselves].” Divided in three parts, their weekly bulletin covers educational content (for instance learning about certain ingredients), causes (such as recycling, pollution, inclusivity), and reviews that were posted that week.
WoM is also a place that wants to emphasize accountability by staying informative without coming off as preachy: “We’re still finding a balance between doing investigative journalism and being gossipy. We don't want to be a part of cancel culture, or tell people to cancel brands. We don’t have insider information so [we] use whatever is available, although [information] may be hard to find.” Instead, the website looks for the link between social issues and beauty, examined through three distinct pillars; the first being a given brand’s transparency: is it clear what this product does and what its manufacturing is? This question is an ongoing question in the beauty industry that Brito believes only third parties would be able to truly tackle: “I don’t blame brands, because it’s like a Prisoner’s Game dilemma: if every brand is not being transparent, then [your brand will be obliterated], if you decide to be so. So, [while] I think that it’s something that needs to be fixed, [I don't think any brand the power to fix the lack of transparency] that we see today. We need to [look at this problem] externally, through something like Word of Mouth, [consumers, or regulations]… I think brands can make a commitment to be more transparent, but at the end of the day there’s just some things that they won’t publicize unless [changes are made].”
Second, WoM aims to touch on the concept of empowerment: do we feel empowered in making our own choices when buying? Are we waiting for an influencer of a magazine to tell us what to do?
I had always thought [that] there should be a place where we can all go for these reviews that are quick and easy and accessible. I know there's a lot of people who like to watch, for example beauty-gurus, but I see that more as a hobby: it’s not that utilitarian in the end because it's like a 20-minute video where they talk about [only a couple] products. [...] Because of Word of Mouth, I’ve done a lot of research about disclosure and that kind of stuff, and it’s shocking that there's apparently like 28% of influencers that were interviewed by [the] Harvard Business Review in this one survey said companies would ask them to do ads without saying it was ads. [That type of thing] makes you wonder how reliable [the stuff you hear is]. [And magazines] in the end are kind of the same: you know the editors have relationships with the brands. They benefit directly and indirectly from keeping these relationships just like [influencers do].
Inclusive femininity is the third facet that WoM is trying to address. How can we intersect beauty and feminism? How can we explore how beauty is usually seen, as a notable source of expression for femme-identifying individuals? Although Brito admits that these questions are especially tricky for the organization to delve into, it seems that the communal atmosphere created on the website is a good place to start: “I wanted Word of Mouth to have a vibe and feeling of when you’re getting ready with friends before a party. When you’re doing face-masks with friends, like when I used to go to my older sister’s room and look at her makeup… To have this feeling of sisterhood and camaraderie. Help other people just genuinely because you wanna help them. Especially since beauty is something that is often seen as frivolous and dispensable, but it actually is very important. It’s something that gives people confidence to go about their daily lives. Just because you’re a fan of beauty products and skincare doesn't mean you’re [not smart].”
I have no doubt that Word of Mouth will reach its targets: when asked about how she saw the website evolve from here, Brito’s eyes lit up. She spoke to me about a potential algorithm that would let users know how likely a specific product would work, based on their skin type and the climate of the place they’re from. She also envisions a search-by-skin-concerns feature, as well as for WoM to “become a good and useful source for companies too, for them to have pages on the website where they can respond to customers and know what people think about their products, and address it themselves. We’d like to create an app, where you could search for products while at a store.” Word of Mouth is a hidden gem that is set to bring positive change to everyone involved in the world of beauty, whether you’re a bonafide skincare and makeup lover, or have just begun testing the waters.
Sign up for Word of Mouth at wordofmouth.social. Keep up with them on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube (coming soon!).