*a reflection on marketing, and the gap between the textbook, the intent and the jar
Photo by Jocelyn Morales on Unsplash
Given the marketing tactics used by many beauty brands to sell their youth elixir — some rather questionable — it’s easy to get wooed by the litany of creams and serums, each more revolutionary than the last, all laced with the promise of a wrinkle-free, cherubic, elastic-skinned face. Chief among the tactics: the sweet narrative about fending off wrinkles, aimed at women in their thirties, on the premise that there’s a limited window to intervene before the next decade brings wrinkles that naturally appear when they should. We’re made to believe that applying anti-wrinkle cream during that limited window prevents crow’s feet from being overly visible. A carefully thought-out strategy to start us young and mould loyalty for decades — something of a customer lifetime value prediction, wrinkle edition: before, during, and after.
As a woman in my early forties, I believed, and at times still naively do, what the tin says it does. Just as I once did the “apply anti-wrinkle cream in your thirties” myth. It was so ingrained that I sometimes ask myself whether I really missed out on smoother lines by ignoring that tenet, made sacred by marketing. Thankfully, my better judgment often surfaces to counter the very well-executed priming powered by billion-euro marketing campaigns. That same judgment had me asking my dermatologist’s expertise, while keeping my own confirmation bias at bay.
As my yearly appointment neared its end and the prescription was being written, I began asking about the real effectiveness of the skincare we’re regularly bombarded with. Specifically, whether higher-tier serums and face creams from luxury brands were more effective. Surely, the price difference between the multitude of serums and jars sold at Sephora must make them more effective than the pharmacy’s La Roche-Posay products I’ve used since my acne-ridden teenage years, or the L’Oréal-branded products on supermarket shelves. Interestingly, many of the luxury brands housed at Sephora, along with La Roche-Posay, belong to the L’Oréal Group: a three-tier pricing structure, one parent company.
The dermatologist’s response, honest and delivered with a friendly smile: “If any of these face creams or serums worked as they promise, we’d know it by now”. I felt as though her smile was meant to address my naiveté as she uttered, “We’d know it by now”. She continued, “The visible results you may be referring to can only come from non-invasive procedures or surgery, but genuine, visible results? No cream can do that”. I left with the prescription, her professional, unbiased verdict, and an embarrassing confirmation of my naiveté – and fortunately, no bias to account for.
The honest marketer in me has always refused to believe that more R&D and premium packaging just mean more deception, but at a higher price. Learning marketing from a textbook and practising it in the world of science publishing is a vastly different experience from anything I have seen these corporations use marketing for. Selling access to science research platforms meant convincing institutions that it would genuinely help their researchers — which it did; the product itself never had to lie about what it did, however questionable its pricing. Theory instils the importance of ethically informing consumers about what they’re purchasing, while using creative ways to convince them to choose one option over another, as I experienced firsthand.
At its core, marketing has always been anchored in ethical and honest practices, as the father of modern marketing said it best: “Only honesty, originality, and authenticity will work”. Philip Kotler has long argued that marketing really is about building trust between consumers and businesses by creating brands and products that serve people and society.
And the scholar is right in positing that marketing has elevated the world as we know it today. He argues that the field’s positive contributions are significant and numerous: the standard of living, products, accessibility, and economic growth — the middle class was essentially built by marketing. Kotler suggests that the discipline’s ethical practice calls for targeting consumers’ minds and hearts in ways that lead to well-being, even more so in an overwhelmingly digital world.
But every ethic will attract its antithesis. Entire industries have willingly smothered consumers with false promises, using covetousness, exaggeration, and even deceit, often invoking scientism to promote miracle results in short spans of time. Many modern marketers, nurtured by businesses, operate on the assumption that human wants are infinite, convincing us — through exposure to countless commercials a day and a steady drain on our bank accounts — that we must have things, some we don’t really need, often things whose packaging doesn’t do what it says.
The beauty industry has been a reference point for its pernicious ability to deceive and dispossess women. Revlon’s founder, Charles Revson, said it plainly: “In the factory, we make the product; in the store, we sell hope.” A version of that motto has been used ever since to prey on women’s vulnerabilities as an acceptable way to generate revenue. Hope, we’re told, is not a strategy, but for Revson, it was – and has worked everywhere since. Another beauty giant took that same logic and turned it into the most famous four-word slogan in the business. The same three-tier pricing L’Oréal Group has spent billions on marketing over the last few decades to convince women they’re worth it. What we’re worth, given how we’ve been sold to ourselves, is the question.
As with any industry, the beauty business is no stranger to its own set of laws designed to ensure and enforce compliance. The EU’s strict regulations require cosmetic claims to be substantiated, enabling customers to make informed choices – yet these same regulations never stopped the French conglomerate from selling impossible standards to women globally, despite coming under fire for its deceptive practices more than once. Its chorus line of ambassadors is as beautiful as they are famous and wealthy, their skin engineered to appear soft and youthful, with no wrinkles or imperfections in sight. As we know, these wealthy celebrities have been blessed by genetics, as well as the means and resources to do exactly what my dermatologist described: non-invasive procedures, the kind no cream in a 12- or 200-euro jar can replicate.
In a branded podcast produced by IBM, the conglomerate opens the doors of its North American Research Centre in New Jersey, where 600 experts and scientists — the largest formulation lab in the industry — use state-of-the-art technology to develop products millions of women use. From a lipstick that survives two days in a car during an Arizona summer, to an eyeshadow engineered to replicate what professional makeup artists concoct backstage at Paris Fashion Week with little more than Vaseline and improvisation, to the century of research the company has condensed, via AI, into 16 terabytes of data — the giant spared no detail describing its own prowess.
Interestingly, skin care wasn’t part of the impressive roster, depicted at length with concrete examples. Showcasing their research into reducing crow’s feet would have held real heft. So what does a century of data, six basketball courts of labs, and 600 scientists produce — if not the results the jar promises?
What the podcast didn’t mention was uncovered by a French team of journalists. They went all in on revealing the jar’s contents and presented their findings in an investigative episode called L’Oréal: parce qu’ils nous le vendent bien – a word play on the company’s slogan. The team of women spent weeks unearthing the secrets behind the brand’s flagship skincare line, Revitalift, with the rigour only science — and ethical journalism — can provide. If you’re familiar with this particular skincare line, its packaging promised women that their wrinkles would be reduced by 47% in just six weeks — an incredible feat by any measure. A Spanish laboratory (French labs declined to participate) put the promise to the test over the suggested period and concluded that the cream does indeed reduce wrinkles — but only by a fraction of the advertised percentage. So, in real terms: 1.2 micrometres of roughness reduction (22%), 2.8 micrometres of wrinkle depth (17%). Both invisible to the naked eye.
To take unethical marketing further, the “ordinary” women testifying to the results in the beauty company’s ads were former actresses and models – maybe helped by genetics and/or a team of dermatologists and skin care specialists on call. Unless it was the 12 euro jar sold in the supermarket aisle? The necessary cynic in me thinks the former might be more plausible. As for the expert dermatologist consulted to analyse the lab results and provide an unbiased opinion, her views echoed my own dermatologist’s: neither Revitalift nor any other cream can deliver what the jar or its packaging promises. It seems that the company’s impressive amount of data can help deliver every innovation, but the one it puts on the box.
Yet the same behemoth, caught lying on national television, once positioned itself as almost an industry watchdog, challenging one of its biggest competitors. In 2012, L’Oréal challenged an arch-nemesis, Dior, over its mascara ad featuring a Hollywood celebrity, which was argued to have digitally retouched eyelashes. The company made a case for how the ad exaggerated what the product could actually do. Yes. The same company that promised 47% but delivered only 17% complained about a competitor doing exactly what it does.
When Kotler argues that brands and products should serve society, he makes a very important point, although I can’t help but wonder whether the contributions marketing has made to society stem from the discipline’s ethical orientation. Many organisations have succeeded in demonstrating honest marketing, but most haven’t, as the beauty industry demonstrates.
Would any of us still buy the skincare if we knew the results were invisible to the naked eye? Most probably wouldn’t. Those who would, at least, would do so informed, maybe for the ritual, the routine that keeps one steady, or because the skin does get a softer touch even if the crow’s feet that have remembered to settle in don’t visibly fade. Not the flawless face the jar promises, but a knowing purchase — with the honesty, originality, and authenticity Kotler himself prescribed. The irony is that a real preventive has existed all along, just not in a jar: sun protection. Not just a serum started in your thirties, but a lifetime habit, is what actually guards against wrinkles, since UVA exposure drives most visible ageing. Perhaps doing the same bang-up job in marketing that would help restore the discipline’s tenets.
Alas, the intent and the textbook aren’t quite aligned when it comes to selling beauty. The industry was worth a whopping $450 billion in 2025 — a clear indicator that we are buying repeatedly and that the billions spent on campaigns are working well. My dermatologist had nothing to sell me, unlike most behemoths and their armies of marketers, who have 450 billion reasons to sell us otherwise. The naiveté I entered and left her office with wasn’t so much about the cream as about my belief in a discipline that, as I learned it, is meant to be practised ethically. Do I know better than to trust that beauty is in the eye of a marketing apparatus posing as the beholder? Thankfully, yes. La Roche-Posay was the jar I happened to be using (a higher-tier one from Revitalift) from a group I never expected miracles from to begin with.
The same gap between textbook and practice — between what Kotler prescribed and what the bottom line allows — runs through every industry selling us something we can’t quite verify for ourselves. Whether brands will ever close that gap is another matter altogether. The likelihood is slim, despite regulations demanding claims to be substantiated, because honesty rarely survives a quarterly target, for the bottom line mustn’t be wrinkled.
Thank you for reading. If the gap between what an industry’s reputation says and what ethical practice actually requires is a thread you enjoy pulling, you might like Why Sharks—and Sales—Deserve Better Stories. And if this story resonated, subscribe to get the next Even-Keeled essay straight to your inbox.
