One look at the recent plethora of ads of different cosmetic products and you notice that although by their category definition they should all do different things, they all claim to have one end effect in common on the user. Be it a cake of bath soap, a skin lotion or a moisturiser — they all promise to make the user look fairer.
The MNC brands flaunt their scientific and specialist angle with chemical compound names, lab coated technicians and complicated scientific explanations as to how the wonder product penetrates the skin and starts its seven day magic. Ponds has multiple sunscreens that work on different depths of your skin. Oil of Olay has molecules which, through their multiple sun block angles, create the safest road block for sun rays.
The desi brands flaunt kumkumaditailam, hal-di, chandan, kesar, badam as effective potions for a glowing skin. Some like Himalaya Neem even caricature a damsel in distress because of the rash on her face. The protagonist makes the lives of every family member miserable making them prepare sandalwood paste, make frantic calls to big brother to send imported creams and when those treatments fail, she covers her infected patch with a new hair style. Then, she has a brainwave about the good old Himalaya Neem and gets back her glowing skin. “Babyji jab pata hi tha pahele use kyon nahin kiya?” The underlying message is that nothing works better than the traditional remedies offered by the Himalayas.
In this concerted caco-phony the market leader Fair and Lovely was not quiet. Best can be bettered. Want to be fair quickly? Use the product regularly says one of its ads; for the more impatient consumer there is a combo treatment with one being a face wash and the other a cream. Being fair is child’s play now — saat din me gorapan. Garnier’s fairness comes with the guarantee of a shade card!
The fairness farce is fast moving in the direction of the paint ads. The more worrying thing is the permanent effect of these fairness performance enhancing products on the skin. It is also somewhat strange that the yardstick of beauty continues to revolve round the traditional concept of fairness. Globalisation has had no effect on this trend; foreign brands in India happily join this retro journey at least their communication seems to indicate this. In fact the traditional Indian concept of beauty was much wider and inclusive; the dark complexion was celebrated as a major beauty attribute. Great male icons like Rama, Krishna and Shiva are anything but fair. Bipasha, Sushmita and Kajol are beauty icons and none of them are fair.
From the marketing point of view it is more important to study the evolving mindset of today’s woman and her attitude towards beauty and femininity rather than chase the so-called traditional construct of it. Women today are more demanding, result oriented and deadline driven in whatever they do. It is time to get under the woman’s skin and find out whether her evolved concept of beauty gravitates around the idea of gorapan. Research on Indian women across categories has thrown up that her sense of self is drawing sustenance not by imitating others but by being herself in her own inimitable way.
Today’s woman is striving to make herself better educated, spending more to sharpen her talents and making a special effort to keep herself healthy, supple and strong. She doesn’t want all her efforts to be overpowered by one parameter of skin colour. More than the changing colour of her skin she wants to change the ‘colour’ of her surroundings by her sheer presence. Home or out of home she wants to carry an aura of her own.
A noticeable change in communication is even seen recently in the much maligned male deo-spray category. Communica-tion in this category, like that in the fairness cream segment has also, as one National Creative Head summarised, mostly been around “varying levels of undressing and seduction with 50 of the girls falling all over deo using men.” Prax Deodorant refused to join this bandwagon. Their new communication is all about chilling out. A young boy in a crowded train thinks of using Prax Deo. In the process he also wants to be a little playful. He rides a suitcase and acts as if he were riding a bike! A fellow passenger joins him in the game and sits behind the suitcase playing his biker girl and then the whole compartment joins in the vroom game enlivening the tedious train journey. When the young man gets down at his station he leaves behind a waft of refreshing deo and a compartment full of energised passengers. Insight-ful, refreshing and eye catching communication which is being talked about is what ads are all about. It’s time the fairness cream communication refreshes itself and finds a new connect with the evolving consumer.

The writer is VP, Consumer Insight & Human Futures Development, McCann Erickson India. Reach him at kishore.chakra-borti@mccann.com