More make up than sense

The beauty industry offers Copywriters the ultimate exercise in creative writing.

Adverts over promise on benefits that formulations can’t possibly deliver, making imagination a key ingredient for an attractive communication.

This isn’t news.

We all know that the industry is based on claims that can hardly ever be substantiated. After all, most creams have more water in them than anything else so they won’t do much.

But with the right words, women will spend hundreds of thousands on make-up, lotions and potions in their lifetime. They’re seduced by contouring, glowing, flushing, shining, defining and turning back the clock.

But how do the beauty brands get away with it? It’s all in the application. A cleverly positioned full stop here, an added word there, and what’s written ends up making no sense at all.

Take a look at this ad:

The headline tells you to imagine the product benefit – it doesn't promise it.

Ah, but the product name tells us it will make our skin tone even better. Look again. See how “even better” is in bigger and bold text and “skin tone corrector” follows in smaller and regular text? Notice the slight gap between “even better” and “skin tone corrector”? These are all firm considerations by the brand. By distancing the two statements, they lose relation to each other and therefore don’t promise anything.

Let’s look at some more cleverly applied claims. This one is from Clarins and is talking about their Concealer Stick:

The softly textured formula contains ultra-fine pearl pigments that boost the reflection of light to help minimise shadowy areas and blemishes.

Basically, the pearl pigments catch the light to make your skin look brighter than it actually is. And that “help minimise” is no mistake. “Help” is a brilliant word for concealing the truth. If the product did what it claims, then the line would be more confident – it would say, “The softly textured formula gets rid of shadows and blemishes.”

So far, so normal in the world of beauty Copywriting but with advances in science and technology, the claims are getting more ridiculous and ads are offering consumers an ideal that’s impossible to deliver.

Take a look at this ad:

Ageless. Dictionary definition: never looking old. Imagine being 80 and having the same eyes you had at eight.

“New Olay Eyes to fight the look of multiple eye concerns” – who calls wrinkles and dark circles, “eye concerns”? A consumer would never go to a beauty counter and ask how they can fight their eye concerns. And “the look of” – those pearl pigments are in everything, busy reflecting light in all the right places but not actually fighting anything. Think about it. Could a cream really remove evidence of ageing? You need a plastic surgeon, not a plastic pot of water mixed with a bit of iridescent powder.

Anita Roddick once said, “There is nothing on God's planet, not one thing, that will take away 30 years of arguing with your husband and 40 years of environmental abuse. Anything which says it can magically take away your wrinkles is a scandalous lie." and, “If you really didn't ever want to get wrinkles, then you should have stopped smiling years ago!”

But making up beauty claims is all part of the fun for a Copywriter. No other industry relies so heavily on imagination and word play to get past a Legal team. One Lawyer once told me that claims made creatively are nothing more than marketing puffery. There’s probably a cream to help reduce the appearance of that.

By Vikki Ross

Vikki Ross is a Copywriter, Copywriting Tutor and Co-Founder of Copy Cabana, the hottest event around for Creatives and Clients: copycabana.co.uk

She made up stuff for a beauty brand for eight years. She buys into plenty of beauty claims that can never be proven. She has wrinkles a cream will never minimise.

Photo credit | picfair.com