Just three months after announcing it will no longer use touched-up images in its beauty ads, CVS Pharmacy released the first advertisements of its new campaign.
The national chain cited a link between advertisements and unrealistic body image when it made the decision to stop featuring imagery that has been “materially altered,” a term the company defined as “changing or enhancing a person’s shape, size, proportion, skin or eye color, wrinkles or any other individual characteristics.”
Unaltered images in the new “Beauty in Real Life” campaign—found in print, social media, digital media and television—feature a “CVS beauty mark” to signal that they have not been altered. Print ads include the tag “Real Life Beauty,” while the 30-second television commercial depicts a group of women putting on and taking off their makeup in, and in preparation for, common situations such as a morning commute, a visit to the gym and an evening out. The voiceover ends with “This is real life. And it’s beautiful.”
“There’s been a shift in what consumers want to see when it comes to beauty,” SVP and Chief Marketing Officer of CVS Health Norman de Greve said in a statement about the new campaign. “They are asking for more transparency and authenticity, and that’s what ‘Beauty in Real Life’ is all about. We wanted to introduce a campaign that uses beauty to make women feel good about themselves by empowering them to feel comfortable and confident in their own skin.”
CVS has experience taking the lead on high-profile health-related issues. In 2014, the company stopped selling all forms of tobacco products in its stores due to the products’ health risks.
Why it matters: In addition to providing CVS with a way to stand out from competitors, the move to unaltered images may prove prescient. Other companies in the United States (such as American Eagle and Target) are already following suit, and last year, France enacted a new law that requires brands to label digitally altered images.