L’Oreal ad featuring Cheryl Cole makes clean getaway
The Advertising Standards Authority has cleared a L’Oreal Elvive campaign starring Cheryl Cole of being misleading and exaggerating the benefits of the hair products.
In a TV ad for Elvive Full Restore 5, Cole says: “Weak, limp, lifeless: it’s time our hair got a life.” The singer goes on to say: “My hair feels stronger, full of life, replenished and with a healthy shine. It’s got its mojo back.” Text on screen then adds “Styled with some natural hair extensions.”, a statement repeated in outdoor and magazine activity.
The ASA received 40 complaints about the campaign.concerns expressed that the effects shown on hair could not be produced by Elvive as Cole was wearing extensions. Some also said that the products shown were not suitable for use with such extensions.
L’Oreal UK said that there had been a rigorous consumer test of Full Restore 5 on people who did not have hair extensions and that the results showed the benefits over the products were achievable.
The company said that the ads, created by McCann Erickson, “were not intended to promise that consumers would look exactly like Cheryl Cole and the average consumer would understand the effects would vary according to hair type as well as how hair was styled.”
It added that the hair extension line in the ads was added “not as a disclaimer but because they wanted to be transparent” and that Cole’s portrayal in the ads was “entirely consistent” with her public image and she had not been transformed “above and beyond” that image for the campaign.
The ASA said that it thought consumers would understand that individual results would vary according to their own hair type and that they would not be misled into thinking the product would replicated for them Cole’s professionally styled hair.
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