Cheryl Cole's "me hair's got it's mojo back!" print and telly ads for L'Oréal Paris' Full Restore 5 range have been coming under fire in the last little while. There have been tens of thou- er, well just tens, actually, of complaints to the UK's Advertising Standards Authority about the ads, saying that their claims to make weak, limp, lifeless, dull or straw-like hair feel stronger, shinier, and silkier are deceptive because, as most Beaut.ie readers will know, Cheryl's mop is choc full of extensions.
The ASA have dismissed all 13 of the complaints made to date, saying that they cannot be upheld since the ads run a clear and legible disclaimer that Cheryl's hair is "styled with some natural extensions".
This is of course standard practise in product advertisements, with eyelashes in mascara ads being "enhanced in post production" or "styled with some natural inserts" or "some other sequence of words which amounts to basically faked." What seems to be getting the goat of the peeps who are complaining about this ad in particular is that Cheryl's hair hasn't just been styled for the sake of the shoots, it's permanently enhanced.
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Anyway, it's a long, long time since I took an ad for a beauty or make-up product at face (ho ho) value, regardless of whether the ad runs a disclaimer. I mean, they aren't given to owning up to Photoshopping or otherwise airbrushing the hell out of models and celebridee spokespeeps, but sure that's going on too.
What do you make of it all? Should we be canny enough as consumers not to be taken in by these ads when the brands are just attempting to illustrate what their products can do? Or is it ridiculous that they can pretend a product does something that it doesn't?
