British Authority Bans Two Ads by LOréal

This is quite interesting. Certainly it is understood that there is a fair amount of retouching in Advertising. I for one oversaw the retouching of a female celebrity of a certain age that had “kill rights” to ANY images of her – and by the time we were done and she had approved it – she had magically transported back in time about 20 years. The process took almost a month – and didnt help that she was vacationing in Bora Bora and I had to send FedEx’s there every few days and wait for her response. The image wasnt for a product making any claims, it was for a movie – but in that sense she WAS the product, and what you saw in the ad was NEVER going to be what you got in person… so I wonder if the move to ban these ads might have further implications regarding what is real and what is “enhanced” in marketing. Thoughts?

By TANZINA VEGA

For L’Oréal, beauty is not always in the eye of the beholder.

On Wednesday, an advertising watchdog group in Britain upheld complaints that had been lodged against the cosmetics giant, forcing the company to withdraw two advertisements deemed misleading.

A Maybelline ad featuring Christy Turlington has been removed from magazines in Britain. The group, the Advertising Standards Authority, began investigating the ads after Jo Swinson, a member of Parliament from the Liberal Democrat Party, filed a complaint about them. According to reports, Ms. Swinson and other Liberal Democrats support banning advertisements that use digital technology to create misleading ads.

An ad featuring Julia Roberts was also withdrawn from publications for being misleading.The ads in question featured the actress Julia Roberts and the supermodel Christy Turlington. Ms. Roberts’s ad was for a Lancôme brand foundation called Teint Miracle. Ms. Turlington’s ad, for a Maybelline brand foundation called the Eraser, showed parts of her face covered by the makeup as having fewer wrinkles in contrast to the parts of her face that were not covered. The ads ran in the February editions of women’s fashion magazines Red and Grazia in Britain.

Continues at: British Authority Bans Two Ads by LOréal – NYTimes.com.