Kylie Jenner removed from Forbes rich list after making 3 brutal PR mistakes

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When you are in the business of being famous, great PR is vital to keeping your wealth generating celebrity machine running. This is especially true for the Kardashians, where mother, Kris, has been instrumental in raising their family to celebrity status. She has used a combination of social media and tabloid headlines to turn the clan’s daughters into celebrity influencers for brand in clothing and beauty.

Now, Kylie Jenner, the youngest sibling, has been acclaimed as the most financially successful of the family. She is the founder and owner of Kylie Cosmetics, having grown it out of the viral Kylie Lip Kits business. It is here where we get into what is a massive PR fail, which got Kylie Jenner kicked off the Forbes billionaire rankings.

In 2019, after having founded Kylie Cosmetics, Kylie Jenner attempted to use this business to propel her to that years’ billionaire list. While she got there, being one of the youngest on the list, it ultimately backfired in 2020. All because of 3 massive PR failures made by Kylie and her PR team.

1. Be careful what you do for attention

If your business exists primarily to make money from attention, you are walking a fine line. When you are actively looking for attention for things that the press wouldn’t otherwise cover you are taking a risk.

Take for example, during COVID. There were a lot of companies and people out there wanting to promote themselves for doing good. They would say how they have donated masks or making hand sanitiser. These companies want to be seen as heroes and want the world to know. The problem comes in with the intent. Rising to support your community is wonderful, and there are a lot of businesses who did it genuinely. However, when you do it just to be seen, you are putting yourself at risk for massive backfire.

It is often extremely obvious when your intentions are sincere. There is a difference when you are actively seeking the attention, or making waves because you made a change that was right for your business, customers, or community. For example, a Gin distillery turned hand sanitiser company. Their pivot was organic, out of love for the community. It showed the challenges of business during an unprecedented time, the real fears business owners face, and the realities of regulatory restrictions. For a business publication like Forbes, this is a story which captivates readers, and inspires them.  

For Kylie Jenner, she went wrong in her relentless pitch to Forbes to get them to name her the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. She was actively seeking this attention. They offered up tax returns and other confidential records, despite being a privately-held business, in order to get her on the list. This relentless push was a backfire waiting to happen.

2. Be careful when you release private financial information

If you are a public company you are required to disclose your financial records. If you have a up or down quarter the world will know. This is a move for transparency. Public companies also are required to follow certain procedures, keeping the information in the right format and equally available to all observers at the same time.

Privately held companies, however, have different rules. While they must provide information to the board, to the bank, and to private investors, they do not need to make their financial information public. This can send a dangerous precedent. If you release your financial information to show you are having a record quarter, then what happens if you later don’t. The press and the public will assume you have had a negative quarter the second you try to keep any information private. Their will be expectations of questions answered and information provided, or they will assume the worst.

This is where Kylie and her team made a major error. Putting out their private financial information to Forbes in their bid to put her on the billionaire list started a bad precedent. While the numbers at the time added up and put Kylie on that list, they opened themselves up to comparison later on. Which now came back to haunt them.

3. Never lie to the press

Here is where the backfire kicked in. The numbers Kylie gave to Forbes in their tax returns validated her company’s earnings. They supported a business valuation of $1.2 billion, which does make Kylie Jenner a billionaire for 2019. However, in 2020 Kylie is selling the company to Coty for $600 million. While a potential drop in sales over the COVID period could have accounted for this, it wasn’t the end of the story.

The bombshell hit when information provided by Coty to its investors showed that Kylie’s company’s prior results where significantly smaller than the numbers her PR team had been providing to Forbes. Not only do they show that Kylie is, and was not a billionaire, but also indicate that her tax returns she provided were faked.

Now that is they type of story both the press and public love. When a prior claim by a source is shown to be false the press will report on it with a fervour and vendetta. The public loves it and soaks it up with glee. Since then the stock in the acquiring company has taken a sizeable dip. In fact, watchers are predicting that Coty may even back out of the deal or sue based on the stories of prior inflated sales.

Not all press is good press

While celebrity status can be great for advancing ideas and products, it can also be a double-edged sword. Often it backfires when you disclose too much information, or try to lie your way to the top. It will come back, and it often knocks these celebrities down a peg or two. The lesson here is clear for celebrity entrepreneurs. Not all attention is good attention. Don’t disclose too much information, and try to draw attention by doing something newsworthy, not relentlessly pursuing journalists. Otherwise you might not like the results.