to ask if any of you are watching the Zoella Advent Calendar hoo ha?

[BriechonCheese]

Now, I might be enjoying this fall out because my DS went to the HelloWorld event and was badly ripped off (a YouTuber event which went terribly wrong) but finally Zoella is being challenged on her over priced tat merchandise. Particularly her advent calendar which is £50 FIFTY FUCKING POUNDS for the likes of confetti, 2 tiny candles, a thin copy book and a Pom Pom!

www.boots.com/zoella-12-days-of-christmas-advent-calendar-10235552

Social media is going mad, there are thousands of tweets, a viral video lampooning it is doing the rounds and it was discussed on 5Live last night.

Is anyone watching this fall out?

Do we think this will finally be the end of these terrible, vacuous idiots? Or am I too optimistic?

But it's not always the parents ££'s that is used to buy this shite. Kids use their birthday money, saving up their pocket money and paper run wage etc.
I guess they don't care because it's something they want or told they need by their idol.
It would be great to see her and the rest make a video without the need to sell or show off their latest haul. But that would be incredibly boring and maybe even impossible.

Hello OP,

It was in the Metro that she made a statement...or a representative did.

A representative for Zoe told Metro.co.uk: ‘Zoe is incredibly proud of the Christmas collection and excited to see it in store. However, the pricing and in store promotional strategy of the collection, including the calendar, is at the control of third parties and is not set by Zoe.’ Proud, guys. Proud.

Read more: metro.co.uk/2017/11/13/oh-dear-people-really-hate-zoellas-advent-calender-7074730/?ito=cbshare
Twitter: twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

Surely she can refuse to put her name on something so expensive

She made a video presenting the “Christmas lifestyle” range and said how proud she was of the advent calendar and how it took a lot of time to get it right.

In developing the product the target cost price will have been derived from the target RRP based on margin potential. There’s just no way they can claim that the pricing and product development aren’t associated.

I know a bit about sourcing and I would imagine the packaging would have been 50% of the cost. Considering the thousands they must have made, I can’t see that the cost price of this in total would have been more than $15-20 (presuming mostly sourced in China).

Zoella is a shrewd multimillionaire adult businesswoman, playing the part of a ditzy twee tween. There's no way she didn't have control over the pricing and content of the calendar. To imply otherwise (the released statement) is an insult to one's intelligence.

Don’t know how she manages to sleep at night tbh. She’s just an exploitative and manipulative person quite frankly.

Though to be fair she only makes a mint because people fall for it. These kids aren't getting their money from a job, why aren't their parents educating them as to what an almighty shill she is? She's definitely capitalised on her success as much as she possibly can and is exploitative to an extent but let's not fall into the trap of thinking she's managed it all on her own. Supply and demand.

Just seen this !!

I think it is Zoellas DUTY to help control pricing considering her target market.

Unless she really doesn’t give a shot about ripping of children.

I imagine she doesn’t care - snide little madam

Brie the pound shop version looks so much nicer

I happened to meet someone today who works with these youtubers...I made my feelings very clear on the whole exploitation of impressionable teens and that ridiculous Calendar. He was quite upfront about the fact some of these YouTube ‘celebs’ are not all they seem, mean girls came up. Very interesting conversation.

Oooh lazy, do tell!

I was just coming to post that @BrieandChilli!

Poundland are savage and I adore them for it.

Boots have now said it'll be £25 from Thursday. Even that is way more than it should be!

I asked this earlier but no one replied, those of you with teenagers, would they be interested in the contents? My ten year old certainly wouldn't be.

My 14 year old dd watched that you tube video and thought it was funny.
She wouldn’t be impressed with that calendar.

I saw the zoella one compared with one from poundland. I wondered why they choose the zoella one to show alongside it. Now I know.

I suspect it was always going to be reduced to £25 for a Black Friday deal. Hence the £50 “perceived value” RRP.

Some of the replies ... her fans seem so blind to it
twitter.com/poundland/status/930488457021059072

Nicknacky my dd is 14 and loved Zoella and thought this advent calendar would be fab but even she was shocked when she saw the contents, the best things were the candles and I wouldn’t be letting my teen burn candles in her room!!

I think this calendar has been a bit if a turning point for her!

We've had decades of vapid pop stars aimed at this age group, but at least even the most dimwitted stage school muppets generally did something. Even if their songs were actually performed by session musicians or autotuned to fuck and the 'star' couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, they could usually dance in a way that was appealing to their fans, or something. And some of them were even capable of saying kind, relatively intelligent things in interviews, or suggesting their fans help out a particular charity, or whatever.
The latest bout of 'celebrities' seem to have almost no personality; they're like black holes.

Zoella has got away with a lot because everyone constantly gives her the benefit of the doubt and sees her as some naive, innocent girl who has been corrupted by the big bad business people.

SHE'S TWENTY FUCKING SEVEN AND HAS BEEN IN THIS BUSINESS FOR A DECADE!

She is a year younger than me (a working parent with a 9 year old) and I would love to be given the benefit of the doubt she gets for making terrible decisions because "I didn't know" what people were doing. Ignorance is not an excuse and it doesn't mean you can absolve yourself of responsibility when things go bad.

The main issue with Zoella's range is that she's still marketed at the tween/teen audience, but is making products aimed at the adult market and with adult prices and the advent calender is a prime example of her "brand" being all over the place - how many tweens are bothered about a room fragrance, bauble and scented candles (or are even allowed to burn candles?!) and how many adults are bothered about a couple of cookie cutters, confetti and stickers?

If the calendar was aimed at teenagers it needed to have the usual 24/25 windows and be more in the £10/15 price bracket. With that price band nobody would have minded some of the crap gifts (confetti, stickers, notebook, cookie cutters) - if the other windows made up for it eg some of her beauty products (novelty shaped soaps, lipgloss, eyeshadow, perfume etc) even if they were only in mini/tester sizes. That way the crap stuff could be written off as little trinkets to "make up the numbers" to the 24 gifts with the beauty range being the main draw and worth spending the £10/15 to try out.

If it was aimed at adults and was going to have the £40/50 RRP then it needed to lose all the crap gifts and instead focus on quality items that adults would be interested in. She could have even kept it to 12 windows if the products are decent enough to command the price, since most adults would prefer quality over quantity. Lose the confetti, stickers, cookie cutters etc and just have the 2 scented candles and room fragrance that are already included and fill the other 9 windows with a couple of full sized items from her beauty range - a bath bomb, hand cream, body butter, lipstick etc - and her lifestyle range - hell she could even keep the pen, notebook & little makeup bag if they were together in one window as a little "stationery set" rather than spread out over 3 windows.

These calendars are crazy. In my day we had to make do with opening a door and being rewarded with a picture of a robin on a Yule log. And we were happy with that.

She'll distance herself completely from this. It'll be Boots' fault,something 'completely out of her control' I expect.

Whilst we're trying to shine a light on YouTube/exploitation of children when is someone going to raise hell about 'vlogging families' who film their children's every move for viewing revenue. Making them perform to the camera. I've seen one little girl repeat her fathers 'hello friends'. THEY'RE NOT YOUR FRIENDS! They're strangers watching you from the second you were born. It's like the Truman show and no one seems concerned by it. Can you imagine,as a professional woman anyone and everyone being able to watch everyday of your childhood?! I would be utterly mortified. When are people going to see this for the child exploitation that it is?!!

I have been amazed people parents haven't made more of a fuss about this kind of merchandising before. My daughter went from having reasonable expectations to extremely grabby when she discovered Zoella. She is very soothing and sweet and appealing and just sells and sells and sells. That combination is a real killer for the tween market. I really think it is a bit like the sweets by the check out that parents started getting angry about.