It’s not everyday your favourite TV host dramatically changes her hair colour, and it seems The Project’s Carrie Bickmore has landed more than just a few passing comments about her appearance shake-up.
The Channel Ten news reporter, who shares hosting duties with Waleed Aly, went from a lively blonde to a dark chocolate brown, done under contract with Garnier. But the program has come under fire for promoting her new ‘do, with Twitters pretty pissed they used the news show to plug a hair product.
“BREAKING: We bring you a very important hair update … #TheProjectTV”, tweeted the show’s official account.
The panel spent a portion of the show having a chit chat about Bickmore’s hair, with the host saying, “You know what, I had the same coloured hair for 35 years and I was bored, and I thought ‘Why not? I’ll give it a whirl’”.
BREAKING: We bring you a very important hair update… #TheProjectTVhttps://t.co/niSeTO71vy
— #TheProjectTV (@theprojecttv) August 22, 2016
But the show landed some serious flak for giving so much air time to Garnier and its hair products.
“That was the longest add ever,” wrote one Twitter user.
“I wonder how much money Garnier paid Carrie Bickmore to colour her hair..” wrote another.
“I bet a hundred million trillion dollars Carrie Bickmore’s hair was NOT done by a s****y garnier box of color,” said one Facebook commenter.
Per reports, The Project EP Craig Campbell said the show was not commercially associated with Garnier.
“Carrie’s deal is independent, Garnier has a deal with our presenter, but has no buy-in nor any commercial relationship with the program … The Project has no commercial association or financial arrangement with Garnier,” he stated.
“If a story on Garnier was newsworthy we would approach it like any other brand or product.
Social media wasn’t so convinced on this point:
But despite the criticism, most people missed the sneaky product placement and instead spent all their time deciding whether or not they actually liked her new hair colour, with comments like “please go back to blonde”, “you go girl” and “next time I want to see blue black hair and a smokey eye”.