Olay Advertisement Analysis

It is without a doubt that the people of the United States and much of the rest of the modernized and industrialized world are extremely focused on beauty, attractiveness and the perceptions of others. This focus and analysis is often pointed inward and towards the self but it also projected and stated outward in many ways as well. Advertisers know this full well and beauty product marketers in particular use that fact and detail as a wedge to sell beauty products. Olay is certainly among the companies that does this and this is easy to see when looking at the way in which they market their creams, lotions and other health/beauty products. While making good faith and provable claims about their products would be fair game, there are some claims and statements they make that are clearly puffery and perhaps bordering on unethical.

Analysis

So as to make things easier, the ad and sales pitch that will be used is directly from the Olay website. To be specific, if it is the product page for the Olay Regenerist Micro-Sculpting Cream Face Moisturizer. This brief report will look at some of the parts... A screen capture of the ad can be found in the appendix of this report. With that established, the observations to be had from this ad are as follows:
• One thing that jumps out is that the customer opinion of the product can be seen on the webpage in question. As of the screen capture, there have been 23,282 reviews and the average score is 3.87 on a five-point scale. One thing that has to be asked is to what extent (if at all) that those reviews and scores have been manipulated or played with, either by Olay themselves or by reviewers that are not ethical or honest themselves. Regardless, 3.87 is a decent, although not excellent, score. A lot of the poorer scores could be because of unrealistic expectations from consumers. On the other hand, those warped expectations could stem from the way that the product is marketed (Olay, 2017).

• The stamp of review and approval form Good Housekeeping is a nice touch. However, it should be asked whether they were remunerated or otherwise compensated for that score and how legit the review process…