Skincare and beauty brand Nivea has dropped Rihanna as the face of their products, parting ways with the singer over her turbulent personal life and raunchy party-girl image.
Nivea’s new CEO Stefan Heidenreich announced Rihanna’s firing, saying that the pop-star’s night-life doesn’t gel with the company’s 100-year-long family friendly image, reports MTV .
“I do not understand how to bring the core brand of Nivea in conjunction with Rihanna,” Heidenreich said. “Nivea is a company which stands for trust, family and reliability.”
According to Brand Republic, Rihanna’s deal with Nivea helped the singer become one of the wealthiest celebrities under 30, earning about $53 million in the past 12 months. Though successful as the face of Nivea, Heidenreich just simply doesn’t want to pay her anymore, saying, “Rihanna is not compatible with the Nivea brand values. It was not a question of the success or failure of the campaign.”
Though it seems pretty clear that she was fired, a spokesperson for Beiersdorf (Nivea’s parent company) detailed Rihanna’s release with a bit more tact.
“In 2011 NIVEA worked with the artist Rihanna in the context of the brand’s 100th birthday anniversary campaign. From the beginning this music-cooperation was scheduled for one year and ended as planned at the end of 2011,” the spokesperson told Marketing Week .
“Within the future brand positioning, Nivea focuses more than ever on its core values,” the spokesperson continued. “This leads to a change in advertising strategy as well as marketing campaigns. Beiersdorf and Nivea thank Rihanna for her work in relation to the 100th birthday anniversary campaign and feel respect and sympathy for her as a person and artist.”
Rihanna herself has responded to the apparent end of her contract with Nivea, taking to Twitter with a picture of Heidenreich, with a caption:
No caption necessary twitter.com/rihanna/status…
— Rihanna (@rihanna) August 7, 2012
Later tweeting this little gem:
Father, I’m trusting and believing that You have something much greater in store for me. You see ALL, and I refuse to take my eyes off You!
— Rihanna (@rihanna) August 8, 2012
…which in my humble opinion, is exactly the kind of thing you hear from someone who just got fired.
What say you? Did Nivea fire Rihanna? Were they justified in doing so?
