ANTI-AGEING/WELL-AGEING
Is well-ageing the anti-ageing of the future?
In our COVID-19 world almost everything is changing, including the concept of anti-ageing skin care. The longstanding promise of helping to repair what time has taken away is rapidly giving way to a new dawn in the global skin care market with ‘well-ageing’. John Knowlton of Cosmetic Solutions explores the future of well-ageing and how it is juxtaposed to what is currently understood as the anti-ageing category.
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he premise of well-ageing is to slow the signs of chronological ageing as a function of time. In other words, the promise of ‘the preservation of youth’, which is a paradoxical twist on the classic antiageing concept of visibly repairing the damage already caused by extrinsic ageing factors. Not surprisingly, well-ageing is developing an enormous global following and the well-ageing proposition of keeping consumers ‘looking younger for longer’ is what the anti-ageing skin care category has always sought to do, with varying degrees of success. This trend also presents some interesting, if potentially complex, novel marketing propositions for marketers to exploit. Classic anti-ageing skin care has historically focussed on women in the 35+ years age group, where age and the later onset of menopause present a plethora of skin conditions that need to be specifically addressed – such products, of course, are of no interest whatsoever to the 20 to 35 years age group because ‘it’s not their problem’. Well-ageing, however, is a radically different proposition, based upon the premise that ‘prevention is better than cure’. This resonates powerfully with younger women in the 20 to 35 years age group, who are insatiably attracted to the idea of skin care products that can assist them in retaining the vibrance of youth that the passage of time threatens to take away.
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MAY 2021 // WWW.PHARMACOS.CO.ZA
"The anti-pollution concept dovetails perfectly into the needs of the wellageing consumer" There are, of course, potential synergies here which are very likely to open up a multiplicity of opportunities to create new sub-categories in the global skin care treatment market. The smartest of companies will surely realise that by developing well-ageing skin care ranges, which may be co-marketed alongside more classic anti-ageing offerings, they can have access to the entire female market, irrespective of age, and start to develop brand loyalty at a much younger age than they would otherwise have been able to do.
DEFINING THE MARKETING CONCEPT So, what does well-ageing really mean and how can it be delivered? There is no unilaterally agreed upon definition of well-ageing, but the sense of the benefit of ‘looking younger for longer’ is universally understood by younger consumers all over the world and they all want more and more of it. As exciting as this is, the challenge from a technical perspective is how to make well-ageing a reality, rather than just a fanciful idea that would be nice to have on one’s wish list?
Delving a little deeper into the well-ageing marketing concept, where the focus is on preventing the signs of ageing rather than repairing damage already caused, it should then be obvious that the concept of prophylactic skin care meets this need. Translated technically, this means the development of skin care products that can prevent damage to the skin over time. In essence this means protection from environmental aggressors such as sunlight, blue light and pollution, which are the main causative factors of the extrinsic ageing process – if you like, the category of ‘defensive skin care’ is born. In the context of prophylaxis, the most important role that skin care products play is defending the skin from sun damage caused by UVB and particularly UVA radiation. It has been well-documented for decades that ultraviolet radiation is the prime cause of the development of virtually every sign of premature skin ageing, including wrinkles, hyperpigmentation, rheological attrition and compromised barrier properties, not to mention the critically more serious conditions of
Did you know? Well-ageing resonates so powerfully with the consumer that the classic concept of anti-ageing is starting to recede. An observation of this is corroborated by the fact that US beauty magazine Allure is in the process of phasing out the use of the phrase ‘anti-ageing’ in its content.
