Back in January, CVS Health took a stand against beauty image alteration by announcing a plan to stop digital retouching on their pharmacy products and marketing materials. As part of this initiative, they started adding watermarks called 'Beauty Marks' to unaltered images, allowing customers to differentiate between products and ads that are digitally altered or not.
Now, the company is furthering its fight for authenticity by rolling out the first "Beauty in Real Life" campaign. This campaign, part of the company's overall push for transparency, includes print, in-store, TV, digital, and social media ads. The first TV spot, made in collaboration with creative agency Standard Black, was released yesterday.
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The 30 second ad opens with a voiceover saying, "in real life, beauty is up to us" and then goes into shots depicting groups of diverse women putting on and taking off their makeup in differing scenarios.
The ad is a short and sweet love letter to empowerment and self-love. It promotes real, unaltered beauty, and is indicative of CVS Health's commitment to change.
Unrealistic beauty standards have been promoted by the beauty industry for decades without shame or consequence. These images have altered consumer perceptions of beauty and have had lasting effects on body image and overall health.
With the "Beauty in Real Life" campaign, CVS is distancing themselves from beauty brands who are still marketing content that depicts unattainable body sizes, shapes, proportions and other physical characteristics.
The "Beauty in Real Life" spot was created in partnership with Free the Bid, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of women directors for equal opportunities to bid on commercial jobs in the global advertising industry. The nonprofit helped CVS find Kat Keene, the director of the project. Photographer Mei Tao created the campaign images.
