7 minute read
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.
The 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.
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 basal and squamous cell carcinomas and malignant melanoma.
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.
SUN PROTECTION A SIGNIFICANT DRIVER
Notwithstanding the advent of well-ageing, the sun care category has seen a radical transformation over the past 50 years. In the 1970s, sun protection products were in a category of their own and purposefully designed to accelerate the tanning process with little or no regard for the harmful effects of the sun. Indeed, it makes one wonder how many women in those days lost their lives to skin cancer, all in the interest of vanity and the then familiar concept of the ‘tanned film star’ look.
The sun care category today is focussed on protection with a growing proportion of products offering higher SPF protection, up to at least SPF 50 in most parts of the world, coupled with increased protection against UVA radiation. While the perception of ‘protection first’ has been the driving trend in the category for the last 20 years, it ironically fits perfectly into the well-ageing trend of the future, where the focus of skin care will be to protect skin from environmental damage as much as possible. Well-ageing is shifting the paradigm for the so-called sun care category, in that sun protection benefits are increasingly finding their way into everyday skin care treatments. This trend is potentiated by the availability of new technologies that make it increasingly possible to develop sun protection products that are aesthetically superior on the skin, a characteristic that is non-negotiable in appealing to the target market at which well-ageing is aimed.
BLUE LIGHT AND POLLUTION PROTECTION
Another environmental aggressor which has become of huge relevance over the past 10 years is blue light radiation, such as that emanating from nearly every electronic communication device used worldwide. What used to be confined to television sets now has enormous global presence, largely due to the exponential growth of mobile phones and social media platforms, both of which, it seems, are now more important to the world’s civilised population than the very air that they breathe.
Considering this trend, many technologies are now being made available which purport to allow the development of skin care products that protect the user from the controversially harmful effects of blue light radiation emanating from their mobile devices. This concept is tailormade for well-ageing and is increasingly viewed as ‘manna from Heaven’ by consumers in the target market, especially as they are statistically the most prolific users of mobile devices.
The COVID-19 pandemic has inevitably accelerated the need for such skin care offerings, given that a proportionally higher number of the world’s population is now working from home where mobile devices, along with their computer screens, are the ‘new normal’ way to stay connected to the outside world.
The last environmental aggressor to be addressed in well-ageing skin care is pollution. The topics of environmental damage and conservation of the planet feature prominently in the media. The fact that mankind is progressively destroying the environment in which he lives has long been past scientific doubt and with an increase in pollution comes an increase in the generation of environmental free radicals which do untold damage to the skin.
Again, the anti-pollution concept dovetails perfectly into the needs of the well-ageing consumer, especially given the high likelihood that women in the 20 to 35 years age group are far more likely to be concerned about long-term survival of the planet and all that live on it, than their elders.
Technologies that deliver protection against free radical damage abound, so the translation of this marketing proposition into a technical reality is relatively straightforward, being principally achieved using technologies that reduce collagen and elastin attrition, whilst providing stimulation of the rebuilding of the extracellular matrix.
A FUTURE WITHOUT ANTI-AGEING
With the COVID-19 pandemic still very much in our midst, the future of many things in life has never been more uncertain and treatment skin care is no exception. The concept of anti-ageing skin care as we know it has never been in greater danger and the marketing proposition of well-ageing is waiting in the wings to spread its benefits over a much larger proportion of the world’s female population in a non-ageist fashion. Who knows, perhaps in 10 years’ time the category of anti-ageing will have aged so much that it suddenly becomes a thing of the past? •
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Knowlton (C.Chem, MRSC, UK Dip Cos. Sci.) has 37 years experience in the cosmetic industry and is the founder of Cosmetic Solutions, which specialises in a wide range of consultancy services to the cosmetics industry. He is a past president of the South African Society of Cosmetic Chemists (1999) and was chairman of the organising committee of the IFSCC Conference that was hosted in South Africa during the same year.
