(I should add that Boots is a leading British retailer of mostly over-the-counter remedies and cosmetics.)
It purports to come from Skincare Magazine and includes a before and after photograph of the same woman. There’s a least thirty years between them and it’s obviously nonsense.
We all know it’s nonsense, don’t we? We all know that it’s done using lighting, facial expressions, hair condition, subtle changes in background colour, and mostly by the judicious use of computer software. (It used to be airbrushing but it’s even easier now once you’re familiar with the technology.)
This before-and-after ploy has been around for longer than I can remember. It was common when I was a boy, and I believed it then because scepticism is a faculty which grows with age and experience. I can’t imagine it fooling anyone over the age of majority now, and certainly not the older people at whom it is presumably aimed.
What really surprises me, though, is that we have an organisation in the UK called the Advertising Standards Authority whose job it is to prevent advertising which is clearly dishonest. Well, this ad for the skin care product is clearly fraudulent, and fraud is surely a form of dishonesty. So why are these ads allowed to continue online? And since we’re all aware of the trickery involved, why do companies continue to pursue the practice. Or are there more people dumb enough to fall for it than I thought possible?
(I can't post the photograph because Google have changed their conditions and crossed a red line. Sorry.)
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