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The Peddling of Beauty
"One can draw valuable conclusions from both
Pascal's Reflections and soap advertising."
Marcel Proust
All women strive to look beautiful every day, irrespective of weather, stresses, and age. Throughout history, humankind has made efforts to comprehend the essence of beauty and reveal its secrets. Many ancient peoples had a tradition of breaking and destroying beautiful objects because it was believed that beauty could blind the eyes and make a person possessed. The destruction was also a supposed to spur the master craftsmen so they would not stop after one masterpiece, but develop their talent in order to delight people with new works of art.
Attractiveness is PR, Outward Appearance is Visual Advertising
The former notion is more widely understandable as it is precisely public relations that ensure the success of a product. This aspect is accentuated by women's magazines and television programs.
You may not agree with this assertion, but if so, you must name at least one publication or TV program that teaches women otherwise. The financial wellbeing of these producers is based on women's simple and natural desire to look beautiful, and they use this desire to the fullest extent. If advertisers were to one day begin trying to convince us that facial wrinkles are nothing to be worried about, and the main thing for a woman is her spiritual world, the consequences for the industry would be devastating.
These advertisers are also increasing in power in Ukraine. According to data from an expert poll by the All-Ukrainian Advertising Coalition, the volume of Ukraine's advertising market grew by more than 60% in 2003 to reach $420 million (before taxes).. Prospects for the current year are equally optimistic: expenditures on advertising are expected to increase by 26% in comparison with the past year. On the whole, the volume of media advertising is expected to increase by 27%. Such a growing industry has many opportunities to promote various products, including beauty products.
And how do they advertise these products? Take the example of face creams. Face creams are usually advertised by creatures so young they could not possibly have any wrinkles. Cosmetics are advertised in this way for aesthetic purposes, but as a side effect, 18- or even 16-year-old girls are becoming convinced they absolutely need to use biologically active cosmetics every day. The outcome of such early experiments is the premature ageing of skin.
The shelves of cosmetic stores are crammed with various preparations. The pressure of advertising does not allow people to relax: no sooner do they form an opinion about the products on offer at one company, but another company enters the market. All cosmetic companies promise eternal youth for you and your skin. Enticed by advertising promises, you buy a nice package often not knowing what it contains.
However, if any one of us were to weigh the best cream on the market against our heredity, way of life, diet and environment, the latter will surely outweigh the former by a significant margin.
It is pointless for a person to spend $100 for a jar of cream, even an effective one, if at the same time that person does not get enough sleep, smokes like a chimney, and lives on chips and Coca-Cola. Such a person should just forget about nice skin.
Direct Selling
Of late, many direct sales companies have appeared on the Ukrainian market. Their multilevel marketing strategies depend on their ability to establish contact with people and win the trust of potential customers.
As an example, take the American company Avon, which first established itself in Russian and then entered the Ukrainian market. In Russia, Avon first created a chain of stores, but through their experience they learned that direct selling was more profitable. Therefore, in Ukraine, Avon used traditional direct selling techniques right from the start. Occasionally the distributor can familiarize a customer with a catalogue that offers a wide choice of attractive products designed for various needs.
Oriflame is already well known to Ukrainian consumers. On entering the CIS market, the company started to sell its products through retail stores for the first time in its history. Yet now Oriflame products can rarely be found in stores because the company has also switched back to direct selling, too. According to the polite and convincing employees of Oriflame, women eagerly order the company's products because doing so enables them to save time on shopping.
Does the Filling Always Correspond to Packaging?
Women have been painting their lips since time immemorial. Archeologists found red sticks in ancient burials, with the help of which our great-…-great-grandmothers drew the contour of their lips. Such cosmetics first appeared in ancient Egypt more than 4500 years ago. The French word for lipstick, "pomade," means simply "apple." Today nearly all women use lipstick on a regular basis. All those women hope, when applying their lipstick in the morning, that the paint will stay in place for some time. Yet this is not nearly true. The average wearer of lipstick consumes 4 g, or one stick of this substance, a year. Unfortunately, almost all of the 12 lipsticks tested by specialists at the Independent Consumer's Test Research Center failed to mention the ingredients on their packaging of their lipsticks, but the legal limit is 30 ingredients.
Unsurprisingly, scientists have found that the best quality lipsticks are also the most expensive (costing UAH 22.75-27.60). Their "optimal" product cost UAH 13.95, so it is unlikely that local lipstick costing UAH 5-7 is going to meet that standard.
Test center specialists also studied popular toner creams (and their packaging) with prices ranging up to UAH 40 per tube. They found that in most cases the complete list of toner ingredients on the packaging was written in English, and in some cases no information about ingredients was included at all. The most important piece of information for most customers, the expiration date of the toner, was even missing from some packages.
Yet this missing information is critical. Cosmetologists say that most problems with the skin stem from the wrong choice of cosmetics, in particular, ones that render the skin inadequately moist.
They also advise customers to ensure consistent quality and avoid knock-off brands by buying their cosmetics in large stores and drugstores rather than kiosks and bazaars. And most importantly, they advise customers to read the packaging to help them avoid irritating ingredients.
One would think that natural cosmetics would be a helpful improvement over standard ones. Indeed, the "natural" in natural cosmetics has lead to their increasing popularity in Ukraine. Certain ingredients are particularly favored by producers, such as soy, grape extracts, grapefruit and peach pith, cereal sprouts, honey and royal jelly. From time to time, exotic plants such as ginkgo or manuka create a sensation on the cosmetics market. Algae and herbs periodically become the hit of the season too. One Ukrainian company even boasts of a line of skin-rejuvenating cosmetics created by a group of Russian, Ukrainian and French physicists using extracts from medicinal leeches.
Ukrainian and French physicists using extracts from medicinal
leeches.
Yet against these lists of ingredients is the hazard that the ingredients will cause skin irritation and dermatitis in some people. Even such often used ingredients as lavender and peppermint have been known to cause such reactions, though it is doubtful that such a side effect would be mentioned on the packaging. The risk of side-effects is such that cosmetologists actually warn customers away from natural cosmetics, stating that they cause more allergic reactions and deteriorate more rapidly than conventional make-up.
Yet despite cosmetologist warnings to the contrary, Ukrainian producers of cosmetics have strongly concentrated on using natural ingredients like germinated wheat extract or whey. Local researchers, likewise, have often deliberately decided against using many artificial ingredients like preservatives and aromatizers so often employed in the food industry.
Cosmetologists advise to Cosmetics for Men
Men are also becoming more willing to adopt certain devices from women's arsenal of attractiveness. The allegation always exists that many elderly men restore their "natural" hair color with dyes. Media sources quoted a representative of a world-renowned American company as saying that certain wealthy South Koreans secretly use complexion cosmetics.
One new cosmetic being targeted at men is the South Korean "colorful lotion." The product is designed to conceal different facial blemishes, and is essentially toner cream by another name. Another product is being prepared to whiten men's skin. Korean soccer players and male models took part in the advertising campaign which primarily targeted boys with feminine facial features. Promoters even invented the name for this category - flower men. However, the demand for new products among such people is much lower than was hoped for. On the other hand, medium-aged businessmen are very keen to have a smooth skin on the face, which they explain by the desire to make a career, says News.ru.
Advertising as a Product Promoter
Most of our wishes originate in perceived desires we adopt during our lives: nobody is born favoring mink coats but the minks. But it would be primitive, however, to perceive advertising purely as a manipulation of our desires. Even if the demand for mink coats rests solely on effective advertising and gives nothing to society except a reduced mink population, many new products really do make our life easier and more interesting.
The true danger is that advertising is habit-forming. One can do without chewing gum or cosmetics, or find replacements for them, but advertising has made their use conventional. Will women always be able to resist the call of advertisers that tells them they can be slimmer, younger and irresistibly attractive?
Lesya Butsenko
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