Why formulators should pay attention to beauty bloggers
In the cosmetic industry beauty bloggers seem to be gaining in their influence and big brands are beginning to take them more seriously. This is good for beauty bloggers and the brands they like but it can also have an effect on how you formulate. 
Here are 2 ways beauty bloggers may impact formulators.
They make you avoid ingredients
Beauty bloggers are easily manipulated by the media and fear mongering groups. They usually have no background in science and aren’t sufficiently skeptical of things that motivated groups tell them. They think sites like Livestrong.com and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics are legitimate sources for ingredient information. They believe erroneous information about the safety (or lack thereof) of cosmetic ingredients. This in-turn can prompt your marketing people to ask you to avoid certain perfectly functional & safe ingredients.
They make you add nonfunctional ingredients
Just as beauty bloggers can be duped by purveyors of cosmetic safety misinformation, they can also be duped by marketers, friends or traditional information about ingredients. They might extol the virtues of an ingredient like Wheat Germ Oil while knowing very little about whether it works.
They don’t know that just because an ingredient is listed on the product label doesn’t mean there is enough in the product to make it work. In the case of an ingredient like Wheat Germ oil, using a high level is unlikely.
Beauty bloggers also don’t understand that health benefits in food do not translate into health benefits from cosmetics. It is completely untrue that whatever you put on your skin gets into your body. It (mostly) doesn’t. You can’t improve your health by applying an ingredient on your skin.
For the most part I’m a fan of beauty bloggers (and I’m also one myself at The Beauty Brains). As a formulator you need to realize they can have an impact on your formulation. This is a good reason for you to follow a few of the more popular beauty blogs. Who knows, some day you might be working for one of these bloggers. That’s how Michele Phan started.
