EVENTS IFSCC
CURRENT CONCEPTS IN CLAIM TESTING
Cutest’s Stewart Long, Immediate Past President of the UK Society of Cosmetic Scientists and Steering Committee member for the 32nd IFSCC 2022 Congress, discusses the evolution of claim testing
D
emonstrating the benefits of personal care products has come a long way since unregulated advertising at the turn of the last century extolled highly unlikely benefits for skin preparations in newspapers. Such claims, including ‘reducing soap’ to ‘wash away fat’ as you cleanse yourself, or a salve to ‘instantly wipe away all traces of unsightly spots’, made promises to consumers that lack all credibility by today’s standards. Times have, thankfully, moved on and, in the 1980s, the large personal care companies started to seek new ways to measure the benefits of products on skin. Instruments such as the Corneometer,
Tewameter, Skicon and others were developed to objectively measure skin hydration and barrier function. Professor Ronnie Marks founded Cutest Systems in 1984 to develop these new techniques, working with the instrument manufacturers, other dermatologists and scientists, and using his clinical knowledge, to rapidly evolve the capabilities of measuring product performance in objective ways.
A HISTORY OF REGULATION
As the ability to measure changes in skin and hair became ever more refined and sensitive, there arose a need to contextualise the measurements in terms of advertising claims. The advertising regulators started to work with the industry to understand whether measuring changes on the skin related to the experience the consumer could expect from a product.
Instruments had become so sensitive that small changes in moisturisation, skin elasticity or wrinkle depth could be measured accurately and
62 November 2021
cosmeticsbusiness.com
Hyperbolic early cosmetic marketing claims included ‘washing away’ fat and ‘wiping away’ spots
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