Ready For New Anti Aging Creams? Read This First…
When the season changes, you can expect a whole sleuth of anti aging creams to hit the market.
Winter chills? You need an anti aging cream that is extra moisturizing and nourishing. The first hint of Spring? Well, time to start spring cleaning you old skin care habits and start a new skin care regime. Hot summer days? You need light weight anti aging creams with sun screen, preferably with a tint that will make you look sun kissed. Autumn leaves are falling? What are you waiting for? You need a new anti aging cream to prepare you for the cooler autumn breeze.
It’s easy to fall into the a buying trap. After all, we change clothes so why not anti aging creams?
Rachel Weisz - L'Oreal anti aging creams ad
Recently, there was a brouhaha in Britain over the actress Rachel Weisz’s much photo-shopped face gracing a L’Oreal skin care campaign. The UK Advertising Standards Authority release a statement that said :
“image had been altered in a way that substantially changed her complexion to make it appear smoother and more even. We therefore concluded that the image in the ad … misleadingly exaggerated the performance of the product in relation to the claims ‘skin looks smoother’ and ‘complexion looks more even.’”
No kidding. Emer Sugrue, Opinion Editor at the University Observer wrote a great article called “buyer beware!”
Here is an extract :
“Of course the Advertising Standards Agency’s job is to investigate complaints about the accuracy of ads, but do these standards go too far? Yes, the forty-something Rachel Weisz appeared with a face so smoothed back that she looked like she was accelerating at 200 kilometres an hour, but the ad was not in any way a lie. The vague promises of smoother skin and even complexion are true. They are actually true of any moisturiser, regardless of cost. All moisturisers serve the same function and there is little to no evidence that those specifically promoted as anti-aging have any extra effect. But the ad didn’t claim that it was better than other moisturisers, just that it was good. Often these ads back this up with a survey showing that eighty per cent of the women they gave some free face cream to thought it was great. It’s meaningless, but not false.”
He then goes on to perfume ads that sells us the lifestyle and ‘cool’ factor rather than the actual smell of the product. In fact, when was the last time you heard the smell of a particular perfume being described? It is all super young looking models doing a variety of unexplainable actions. (The latest Prada Candy one comes to mind – what was all that about??)
Here is Emer Sugrue’s take on perfume ads:
“The majority of advertisements are either bland statements of fact or suggestive promises pasted over aspirational imagery. Perfume ads are the best example of the trend. Not one perfume ad mentions what the product supposed to smell like. Instead they are a montage of aspiration and wish fulfilment. Men’s ads feature aloof, handsome, mysteriously shirtless men with just the right amount of stubble finding stunning women throwing themselves at their feet. Women’s ads show models draped in silk with said aloof shirtless men in an agony of love, lust, angst and whatever other sexy emotions the Twilight series have popularised, and you could have this life too if only you gave Calvin Klein your money. Could this sort of advertising be banned by the ASA? The imagery is definitely misleading. All a purely factual ad can promise is that if you buy this bottle of smell, you will smell like this smell.”
I had to laugh. The shirtless men seems to be a staple is all perfume ads and as my daughter says, they are “always wet or in the process of getting wet”.
Do you fall for all the advertising hype? Do you fall for all the seductive promises? OK, let me ask another way – how many pots of anti aging creams do you have in your bathroom?
Mmmmmm…..
Anti Aging Creams
Stop being a night owl. Get enough sleep.
(it has been reported that it is ten times more powerful than resveratrol), astaxanthin is nature’s sun screen but it also has many other beneficial anti aging properties.
