Olay Regenerist anti-aging ad banned for misleading viewers

An Olay Regenerist anti-ageing skin cream commercial featuring Eve Cameron, the beauty director of She magazine, has been banned for misleading viewers.

The advertisement claims that the “pentapeptides” in the Olay Regenerist anti-aging cream help in reducing the appearance of lines and wrinkles.

The commercial created by ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi shows Cameron citing a study presented at the World Congress of Dermatology that claims that Procter & Gamble’s Olay Regenerist skin care cream reduces the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles because of the presence of “pentapeptides” in the cream.

The Advertising Standards Authority, which received 46 complaints about the advertisement that it was misleading and offensive, ruled that viewers would be unfamiliar with the way scientific data was validated.

In the advertisement, Cameron has said that women who are not ready for cosmetic injections, but want dramatically younger-looking skin, should try Olay Regenerist with pentapeptides.

“Women who aren’t ready for cosmetic injections constantly ask me to recommend a skin cream that really works. So I was excited when this study, revealed at the World Congress of Dermatology, showed that pentapeptides are effective in reducing the appearance of lines and wrinkles,” Cameron was quoted as saying.

Four issues were taken into consideration in the 46 complaints made. First being the implication that Olay could deliver the same benefits as injections.

“Many viewers objected that the ad was misleading and offensive, because they believed it implied cosmetic injections were a natural or inevitable next step for women as they got older,” the ASA reasoned.

A doctor amongst the viewers complained that there was not a satisfying scientific evidence that pentapeptides reduced lines and wrinkles.

The doctor also argued that the advertisement misleadingly implied that the scientific community supported the paper presented at the WCD.

ASA said they considered the claim “pentapeptides are effective at reducing the appearance of lines and wrinkles. So if you’re not ready for cosmetic injections, but want dramatically younger looking skin, try Olay Regenerist with penatapeptides,” a strong performance claim linked to a specific ingredient.

An ASA expert also said that there were methodological gaps in the management of results and interpretation of data presented in the published paper (by P&G).

However P&G said it had carried out two studies into Olay Regenerist, which showed that the level of pentapeptides in the product “significantly reduced the appearance of lines and wrinkles.”

One of the studies was published in the International Journal of Cosmetic Science in 2005. The paper on pentapeptides was also presented at the WCD and was “entirely factual,” P&G added.

The ASA also took into consideration a statistical fact that the majority of the 2,000 women who took part in the cream tests reported that pentapeptides had ‘no effect’ on the skin.

“We understood that in the published paper the majority of test subjects themselves reported no effect for pentapeptides and in the unpublished paper the assessing dermatologist reported no effect,” an expert at ASA said.

ASA has said that P&G had not provided evidence sufficient to support the claim that pentapeptides are effective at reducing the appearance of lines and wrinkles.

The ASA also said, “Although we acknowledged that, as a moisturizing product, Regenerist was likely to temporarily reduce the appearance of lines and wrinkles, we considered that, to substantiate this type of claim, the results from studies should be ingredient specific, perceptible to the consumer, and consistently in favour of that claim.”

Proctor and Gamble Ltd, which owns Olay, admitted it had no intention to imply a comparison with cosmetic injections.