Octavia Spencer is taking the weight loss company Sensa to court after they tried to back out of paying her because their endorsement deal with “The Help” actress didn’t perform as well as they hoped it would.
Sensa is refusing to pay the 43-year-old actress $700,000 of her $1.25 million contract that both parties agreed on, and Spencer is firing back with a breach-of-contract lawsuit.
Sensa is suggesting that Spencer damaged their promotional campaign efforts by adding the hashtag #Spon to her tweets when she was promoting Sensa on her social media, to let her followers know that the promotional statements were part of her endorsement deal.
Hollywood is known to be a town full of greed and dishonesty, so when an award-winning actresses fights to be completely honest with her followers, it’s a shame that a company like Sensa would want to punish her for it.
After Spencer snagged an Academy Award for best supporting actress in 2011 for her role in “The Help,” several weight loss companies reached out to her in hopes of sealing an endorsement deal.
One weight loss company even offered the full-figured actress a whopping $3 million, but she turned the deal down because Sensa was the only company that agreed to some rather unusual stipulations.
Spencer wanted to make sure that her campaign was all about healthy living, not dramatic and over-sensationalized weight loss.
She also wanted her fans to know that all her tweets promoting Sensa were sponsored so she added the hashtag #spon to all her posts that were about Sensa.
One tweet read: “walking thru the mall i hear: is that her, the lady from the Help, answr: No she’s too ‘skinny.’ Thanks @SensaWeightLoss #MadeMyDay #Spon.”
Despite all her special requests, Sensa still agreed to the deal with Spencer.
Other stipulations in the deal included that no before and after pictures would be used and that her weight loss story wouldn’t be over sensationalized and featured in the gossip magazines or tabloids.
If you happen to be subscribed to Star or OK! then you know that Sensa certainly didn’t keep that end of the bargain.
Sensa still wanted to push her ads to other magazines and according to Jezebel, the actress finally complied with their wishes and both magazines ran over sensationalized stories about her weight loss.
Spencer lost about 20 pounds while using Sensa, but the magazine headlines were promoting “Octavia Spencer’s Thirty Pound Slim Down!”
Perhaps the most shameful part of it all was that Spencer also asked for $100,000 to go to charity involved with fighting childhood obesity, but Sensa has failed to donate a single dime so far.
Now that Spencer’s weight loss campaign didn’t do as well as the weight loss company hoped it would, they are trying to back out, claiming that it was all of Spencer’s stipulations that caused the poor performance.
Sensa’s lawsuit pointed out that Spencer’s social media posts received fewer “likes” than any other posts from Sensa’s celebrity endorsers, but that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with her hashtag.
While she is certainly an incredible actress, she doesn’t have the cult-like following that other stars boast and therefore her social media posts may even go unnoticed by many people.
At the end of the day, Sensa agreed to all of Spencer’s stipulations, including her #spon hashtag, and they can’t back out of paying her $700,000 simply because she isn’t actually as famous or influential as they thought she would be.
It’s also important to note that transparency when it comes to advertising relationships is a requirement by the Federal Trade Commission and several other stars have had close calls for not following these new guidelines. In other words, Sensa is trying to back out of paying Spencer because she decided to follow the law rather than dupe her fans for profit.
Sensa has not yet publicly responded to Spencer’s lawsuit.
