Dark side of colorful cosmetic market!

by Basia

Cream for anything and everything

Cosmetics market is very specific. We can observe rapid progressive diversification of products: customers are offered goods, which were not there in the past.  People began to supply creams for different parts of the face and body:  eg. Under the eyes, cheeks, separate for the night,  day, bad weather and good mood.

This type of persuading tactics are absolutely effective not fully ethical, however allowing cosmetic brands to expand the market. As mentioned above, people still believe in not ethical mere lies which cosmetics manufacturers are feeding customers with.

Until now, people were suspicious about the origin of the advertised cosmetics  – now they have the proof in the form of scientific research. The results of the study were published in June  titled “Deception in cosmetics advertising: advertising cosmetics Examining Claims in fashion magazine ads”.

Shatter the myths 

The researchers took into account fashion magazines which were advertising cosmetics. That’s where the fakest messages were found. What  have they established?

First of all, the fact that the advertising of cosmetics speaks in their own language, which is designed to sound serious and inspire confidence. Close examination of these trends revealed that, for example, most superiority claims were categorized as false, while scientific claims tended to be classified as vague or as omitting important information.

Naive nation?

All the used terms shall have the impression of the scientific method: protection, regeneration, deep absorption, etc. Somehow at the same time, these very rare terms are explained. The accompanying charts provided in adverts are often deprived of the units for each axis and does not really represents anything relevant.

Researchers in the study (the research team was led by Jie G. Fowler from the University of Georgia) found that over 80% of this type of “facts” had no basis in reality, it was very tight, tension, or sounded like an attempt to mislead. What would be the attempt to mislead? For instance, sophisticated determination of the obvious characteristics of the basic  product (“moisturizing” on the product based on water-based).

To conduct a study, scientists analysed 300 full paged advertisements in magazines. Out of all of them, they catalogued 757 different definitions and theorems. The most common were “not tested on animals”, “recommended by dermatologists” and “clinically proven”.

Smart lies

Furthermore, the panel of scientists undertook a detailed check of each of the terms, categorizing it then in one of four categories: “acceptable”, “vague”, “incomplete” and … “a hundred percent lie”.

In the category of “acceptable” there were only 18% of statements (including only 14 percent of the category “clinically proven”).It is worth to recall a study conducted in 2005 by Roger Highfield. He chose the elite of the scientific community (mainly specialists in medicine and biology) and asked for an explanation of the various terms found in advertisements and on packaging for cosmetics.

 

It turned out that they cannot understand or explain those terms because … usually were meaningless cluster of wise-sounding words. For example “Lancôme scientists have created Aquacellular (TM), a unique moisture complex of 16 essential elements found naturally in radiant, healthy-looking skin.“

So if the cosmetics commercials seem to be exaggerated or incomprehensible, it is probably because they are  bogus!

Do you trust cosmetic brands ? What is your opinion about complicated terms promoted in TV and magazines cosmetic ads ?