Beauty Gone Wrong! When Companies Take Desperate Measures.

Beware! Beauty and/or Medical Device Companies are all competing for your money. You probably already knew that, but you may not know just how far some of these companies (like SculpSure and L’OREAL) are willing to go to get your attention.

How do you usually determine what’s the best product out there? Sometimes you’re influenced by advertisements, sometimes by a review, and/or sometimes by a friend. Well, companies know this, and so they put a lot of effort into advertisements, and paying people to write reviews.

A recent example of this desperation happened when SculpSure (manufactured by Cynosure) promoted an advertisement in Times Square. SculpSure is a new product that says it can remove fat in 25 minutes with a laser treatment to the desired area. At first glance, this looked like a legitimate advertisement, but at a closer look (and exposed by Twitter handle @PamelaNguyen85) the whole thing was photoshopped! I won’t even get started on what this does for investor confidence of Cynosure, but it’s scams like this, which may actually have an influence on whether or not someone buys a beauty service over another.

It appears that increased exposure was applied to the photo to accentuate how someone placed a SculpSure picture over the PR Newswire MultiView jumbotron (look at the difference in black colors).

You can also see in the photo shared originally by @DCDermDocs (DC Derm Docs), and later ReTweeted by @SculpSure, that this advertisement doesn’t look like the other advertisements previously on this same jumbotron. Notice how the SculpSure sign covers what should be the MultiView sign up top? This makes me think the photoshopper didn’t realize MultiView was part owner of this jumbotron. If you want to see more images like the two on the far right, just query “times square pr newswire jumbotron” in Google Images.

So how big a deal is this? Well, let’s look at the cost to advertise in Times Square. According to Investopedia it could cost anywhere from $1.1 million to $4 million a year to buy advertising in Times Square. If SculpSure told its investors it was spending big advertising bucks in Times Square, but they didn’t end up spending it there, where did that money go? See? Kind of a big deal. Not to mention if they are willing to fake this, what else are they willing to do?

Another example of a Beauty and/or Medical Device Company going way too far might just apply to the entire mascara industry. What do I learn from a mascara advertisement? That I should just get false eyelashes. Similar to SculpSure, mascara brands are photoshopping the crap out of their models so their eyelashes are uncharacteristically long with just a few swipes of the mascara brush. Check out the photo from L’OREAL below for their Miss Manga mascara.

How did this become the industry norm? And who started advertising like this in the first place?

Well, as it turns out, advertisements around eyelashes have not changed much in the past century. Fashionista.com showcased some of Maybelline’s oldest advertisements in an article last year (2015 marked 100 years of business for Maybelline), and the eyelashes were always BIG. Being a young and easily influenced woman back in the day, I absolutely remember thinking that if I could convince mom to buy me mascara, my eyelashes would look just as large. And no matter how many brands I tried, I never had eyelashes anywhere near what they advertised. But if there is supposed to be an 8X boost, what gives?! Apparently, brands think we’re smarter than we really are — they think we realize our eyelashes will never look like the models. Have they taken a sociology class? Today, I wear false eyelashes for big events.

This does seem to be a pretty big deal. There are numerous instances where the Advertising Self Regulatory Council ordered companies to stop using false eyelash inserts in its commercials. Two of the companies feeling the pressure are Maybelline (L’OREAL company) and CoverGirl (Proctor & Gamble company), although Maybelline has appealed the decision. The NYTimes has a pretty good article on the topic.

All in, there is a lot of desperation from beauty and/or medical device companies. We are easily influenced as a population (both men and women), and they know it, and they abuse it. One way to avoid these fake influences? Do some online research. The truth is bound to come out.