Lori Loughlin's Daughter, a Social-Media Celbrity, Is Caught Up in College- Admission Scandal

Recently, as of early March 2019 news broke out, uncovering the worlds largest college admissions scandal. Dozens of wealthy parents, including celebrities, such as Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman have been charged with "bribing coaches and administrators to get their children into elite schools". Lori Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli reportedly paid $500,000 to get their two daughters into USC. They had their daughters pose with rowing machines to appear as rowers which were then able to get them a spot on the crew team, allowing them to create a loophole to get accepted into the university. 

Lori's daughter, Olivia Jade Giannulli is a commonly known YouTube and Instagram star, who has made many brand deals and collaborations during her time at USC. Ms. Giannulli's "followings [are reporteldy] big enough to draw blue-chip advertisers and likely enough to net her hundreds of thousands of dollars in product-placement fees a year". Ms. Giannulli has done brand deals with Amazon and Tresemme while also scoring a collaboration with Sephora by creating a make-up pallet that was sold at Sephora with Oliva's name on it. Lori Loughlin is famously known for being on TV shows and soap operas in the late 1980s. More recently, Lori is featured on the Hallmark channel as well as Fuller House and a few other shows.

This scandal relates to personal branding and reputation. Due to Lori and Oliva's business being built around their name, this bad publicity can hurt their brand significantly. For Lori, she may be dropped from television, and for Oliva, she may lose many sponsors and brand deals. Brand reputation is very important for a company because it can either propose possible opportunities or the opposite and expose the company to many threats. In this situation, the latter seems to be the case. 

I picked this article because everyone on social media is talking about the scandal and I wanted to read a few articles to make sure I knew the facts. Due to this scandal being about college admissions, this also sparked my interest because I know how stressful college applications can be, and seeing how the rich buy their way through those times is eye-opening. While this isn't a shock to me, it is still morally wrong. 


LINK: https://www.wsj.com/articles/lori-loughlins-daughter-a-social-media-celebrity-is-caught-up-in-college-admissions-scandal-11552430211?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1