HUL to drop ‘normal’ from beauty brands’ ads

Hindustan Unilever will eliminate the word ‘normal’ from packaging and advertising of all its beauty and personal care brands to demolish stereotypes as consumer activism and awareness towards building an inclusive society takes centre stage the world over.“The decision to remove ‘normal’ is one of many steps we are taking to challenge narrow beauty ideals, as we work towards helping to end discrimination and advocating for a more inclusive vision of beauty,” said Priya Nair, executive director, beauty & personal care, HUL.Skincare and hair care brands have been widely using ‘normal’ to refer to skin and hair type that’s neither too ‘oily’ or too ‘dry’, but in an increasingly inclusive and diverse world consumers are questioning and rejecting such notions. “Who is to decide what is normal? Is curly hair normal? Or dry skin normal?” Nair said.India’s largest packaged consumer goods company, which makes marquee beauty brands including Dove, Lifebuoy, Axe and Sunsilk, will remove ‘normal’ from its communications as part of a worldwide drive by its parent Unilever, which is expected to take a year to implement.81403086In addition to removing the word ‘normal’, HUL has also decided to not digitally alter a person’s body shape, size, proportion or skin colour in its brand advertising, and will increase the number of ads portraying people from diverse groups who are under-represented.In July last year, HUL had dropped the word ‘fair’ from its biggest skin fairness brand Fair & Lovely and renamed it Glow & Lovely amidst global outrage and anti-racism protests triggered by the killing of African American George Floyd by the police.The face care segment in India is estimated at Rs 10,000 crore, with HUL leading the category with dominant 43% share, said executives quoting Nielsen data. HUL’s mainstay skincare brands include Fair & Lovely and Pond’s White Beauty, which are followed by a distant gap by rivals Nivea and L’Oréal, according to the data.Global research into people’s experiences of the beauty industry reveals that using ‘normal’ to describe hair or skin makes most people feel excluded.Citing data from extensive research by Unilever on consumer perceptions of beauty, Nair said that in India, over eight in 10 people think that using the word ‘normal’ on beauty product packaging and advertising has a negative impact. This includes making people who don’t feel as though they have 'normal hair’ or ‘normal skin’ feel excluded or feel bad about themselves.She said the research added that the beauty industry is seen as contributing to the spread of narrow beauty ideals, with over six in ten people stating that the beauty and personal care (BPC) industry shares narrow beauty ideals, while two in three think that the industry is pressurising people into thinking they need to look a certain way.The research also revealed that a majority of people agree that the BPC industry still has some way to go in representing people of various body types, people from different age groups, ethnicities and from the LGBTQIA+ community.

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