L’Oreal Colour Riche Anti-Aging Lipstick: My Face Looks Younger!

This is a commercial for L’Oreal’s Colour Riche Anti-Aging Lipstick.

She really does claim that her whole face looks younger because of a lipstick.  Seriously?  Is this magic lipstick?  Because I’m pretty sure your face looks flawless because you’re a supermodel and have an army of make-up artists and digital touch-up techs to make it look however you or L’Oreal want it to look.

And the explanation for how the lipstick works is pretty weak.  It’s got some special stuff in the middle that’s supposed to plump and firm lips and is lusciously surrounded by color so bright you can’t tell how plump or firm the lips wearing the color really is in the first place.  How that amounts to making your whole face look younger, I’m not sure.

Basically, this whole ad felt like a lot of smoke and mirrors and empty promises for women who have been taught that looking a day over eighteen is tantamount to being dead.  I’m not impressed and found it annoying enough that it might come to mind next time I’m shopping and make me stay away from anything with L’Oreal on it.

Clinique: Whiten Your Teeth with Lipstick

I came across this magazine ad for Clinique lipstick recently and just had to post it.

The text reads:

Clinique can’t whiten your teeth.

But we can brighten your smile.  Instantly.

Fact: on application, Clinique’s specially designed lipstick colours create a contrast that brightens your smile.  Using a dental colour guide we confirmed it: each smile was at least one shade brighter.

So here you have it: the wow of whiter teeth in pearls and buttery shades in nudes, goldens, pinks, berries.  12 shades in all.

Still not convinced?  See the before and after at clinique.com.  Or see it for yourself.  Stop by any Clinique Counter for a complementary try-on of any and all shades in Clinique’s Brighter Smile Collection.

Clinique

Allergy tested.  100% fragrance free.

I find this claim very strange.  I have no problem believing that a lipstick and make a smile seem brighter, but I can’t see how it could make any real changes that would show up on a color guide.  Because it’s not actually changing the color of your teeth, it’s just an optical illusion.  And that can work great – I’m not saying it’s not a totally worthwhile way to make teeth appear whiter – but it’s not true shade changing.

The image of the red lipstick with the white toothbrush seems to reinforce the claim that this lipstick can make your teeth look whiter.  It’s a well put together image for the rather deceptive claim.

I just kind of have a problem with that deceptive claim.  Despite starting with the sentence “Clinique can’t whiten your teeth”, the entire block of text seems to be trying to convince the reader that they can do exactly that!  It’s annoying.  So I don’t like this ad very much, despite the fact that I actually think it’s a good angle for a lipstick line to take in their marketing and I’m a little surprised I haven’t seen anyone else using it.

Mary Kay: Bendable Make-Up?

Mary-Kay is like Avon, it’s make-up you don’t buy in a store, but rather from your local “representative”.  Basically, usually you have to know someone who sells it to get it (although I think they have an online database to help you find local reps now).  And yet, they have commercials.

Besides the fact that I find it odd that there are commercials for a product line that you can’t just go buy, this is an odd ad in and of itself.  Unlike most beauty ads, it’s totally unfocused.  It shows skin care products and make-up in the same ad and it never mentions any actual product names.  Since part of the point of the sales model is that each rep can sell things her own way – sort of create her own sales pitch – I guess that makes sense.  It just makes for an ad that tells us nothing about why we should care about the products and little about why we should care about the brand.

Branding, which I talked about yesterday with Toyota, can be a really good thing.  But this ad seems to be trying to do branding and sort of failing, in my opinion.  It’s chaotic and while the voice over talks about the ability to have beauty “your way” and implies that they allow for a flexibility other lines don’t, that isn’t evident at all.  The models all look sort of the same (which is typical for beauty ads) and even the voice over talks about trends and “modern beauty”.  So all we see is that this brand is exactly like everybody else.  And the feel is more “trendy” than “flexible”, so the impression I walked away with was that this was just another brand of make-up like everything else available at the drug store.

And that’s very bad branding.  The point is to stand out, not make yourself fade in even more!

Clinique: As Uncomfortable as High Heels?

This is an ad for Clinique lipstick that was found in a fashion magazine.

The text reads:

High on colour, long on comfort.

New High Impace Lip Color SPF15 wears beautifully for 8 hours.  And lips enjoy every minute.  In 20 highly moisturizing shades that continually smooth, soften, comfort.  Protect from UVA/UVB, too.  Have it all.

I only just noticed that this ad uses the British spelling of “colour” even though it was in an American magazine.  Anyhow, this ad caught my attention because the juxtaposition of that high heeled shoe (and that is one very high heel, probably three full inches) with the phrase “long on comfort” made me laugh out loud.  Shoes like that aren’t comfortable, they’re very bad for your feet.  While there are people who have worn very high heels so long that it’s uncomfortable or even painful for them to wear anything else, they are not only in the minority, but they have come to that point because wearing the shoes has done serious physical damage to them.  High heels may be sexy and not even necessarily uncomfortable, but shoes like that aren’t likely to be what comes to mind for most people when you say “long on comfort”.  Personally, I think of slippers (or, even better, bare feet).  I think that the shoe works for “high on colour”, but it actively makes me disbelieve the claims about comfort.  It makes me wonder if the people behind the product really understand what comfort is.  That’s not a good marketing move.  Sexy is a good angle with lipstick, but telling me that it’s as comfortable as those shoes is probably not the best way to get me to buy it.