Good morning. May I ask a question please for the experts ? How do companies get away with the sales tactics they use ? I am just watching a shopping channel I won't say the name but there is a face cream for £70 and they are claiming it has "cell regeneration smart technology" and claim you'll see tighter lifted skin in 2 weeks with less fine lines and jowls. Well we all know this is just sales hype. When I put the product into WIMJ it can't even live up to the anti aging claim. It's only passed as an "OK" moisturiser. How can the sales and marketing get away with this? And its awful that people spend good money on false claims. Are there no regulations?
Thank you so much for this website.Absolutely get so much joy from using it.
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Here is my take based on what I've learned about the industry over the time of working on WIMJ. There is regulation, but for cosmetics it is mostly focused on product safety: like banning or restricting the use of certain ingredients that could pose a serious risk to our health. As for product claims, false advertisement is penalized, as in: you can take a brand who makes false promises to court. But here is where it gets tricky. If you carefully look at the wordings brands use for making promises, they are often phrased a little weird. For example, instead of saying: "Our product helps reduce wrinkles", they say things like "promotes cell regeneration", "reduces appearance of wrinkles", "supports skin repair and rejuvenation" etc. These phrases are vague. Though most consumers interpret them as "reduce wrinkles" or similar, in court the brands can proof that this is not what their promise was. What exactly does "supporting cell regeneration" mean in biological sense? (spoiler: not much). A simple moisturizer can absolutely improve the look of fine lines and wrinkles simply because moisturized skin looks better than dry, flaky one - regardless of the wrinkles (and severely dehydrated skin can get additional temporary fine lines). Another trick is to add a tiny amount of an ingredient to a product and say things like "Contains X extract, known for its anti-aging properties". The X extract can be known for its anti-aging properties in ancient medicine, when taken orally. So the claim can be easily defended in court without a need for the extract to actually work for anti-aging, not to mention to work for anti-aging when applied topically to the skin in the concentration used. So yeah, it's a mine field and a lot of "snake oil" sales tactics is in play unfortunately.