The next miracle worker cream? Olay!
May 21, 2008
There’s a new wonder cream in town - and this time you can afford it.
There is a scene in Marian Keyes’s hugely successful novel Anybody Out There? in which the beauty PR is forced to present yet another face cream to yet another jaded beauty editor, to somehow convince her that it is worth the “exclusive” pages in her glossy New York magazine. What this cream needs, she decides, is “a waiting list to go on the waiting list”. In the end, she hands over one tiny pot of cream to one editor only, but does it in such a secretive way (rooftop helicopter flights to a boat moored 10 minutes away) that “it almost seems illegal” - and the rest, as they say, is another bestseller.
If truth is stranger than fiction, then the beauty industry has been very honest indeed when it comes to its latest grand production. The urban myths building up around the launch of the new Olay offering, Regenerist Daily 3 Point Treatment Cream (code-named “Monaco”), start the minute you call the press office. Somehow, I end up on the waiting-list line, where a recorded message asks for my details so they can inform me as soon as the cream is in stock.
Hold on a minute - a waiting list for Olay? The brand that some of us still call Oil of Ulay, until we remember that the term ages us in the same way that calling GCSEs O-levels does? “It’s for women who went to America last year and bought it when it launched there,” says Jenni Beveridge, in the UK press office. “They love it so much, they don’t want to miss out,” she continues enthusiastically, before offering me a trip to - wait for it - Egham, Surrey, to view the famous Procter & Gamble (P&G) laboratories.
Egham. Bring back the helicopter ride. It seems that for Olay’s new launch, a more honest, less hype-ridden campaign is the way ahead. Maybe it’s because, with a recession looming, we’re all a bit less extravagant at the moment, but it’s also possible that, following the success of such products as Boots No 7 Protect & Perfect, honesty is officially the best policy.
The reason there was a waiting list for the new Olay cream, which launched in the UK last Monday, comes down to two words: Good Housekeeping. The American branch of the famous GH Institute, arbiters of all things tried and tested, decided to pit the cream against several luxury-brand antiageing creams, then published the results. Olay came top in moisturising. The rest, as they say, is another bestseller at the New York pharmacy chain Duane Reade.
“It caught the attention of consumers, and this is what caused the amazing buzz,” says Emma Kohring, P&G’s external relations manager, referring to the fact that, in the three months to January, Olay was selling one pot of the new cream every minute in the USA. “Sales started picking up dramatically in America, and I heard that British fashion editors were buying it up at the shows because it hadn’t gone on sale yet in the UK.”
Of course, the gazillion-dollar question is: what did Good Housekeeping compare it with? Annoyingly, the answers are more discreet than honest. “Products in the £100plus range” is the most they would tell me.
“You’re talking about Crème de la Mer, aren’t you?” I say. “I didn’t say that name,” Kohring replies. “But there were three other high-performing creams, up to the price of £150, from one American, one Japanese and one French company.”
So, what makes Olay’s new cream so special? First, Kohring says, it feels luxurious on the skin. The greatest ingredient in most moisturisers is glycerine. Did you know that cough medicine is so sticky because, like moisturiser, it’s made from glycerine? The skill in making a moisturiser feel like velvet on the skin - and not Tixylix - is getting the levels of glycerine right.
The second reason Olay Regenerist Daily 3 Point Treatment Cream is so special is that it claims to give significantly smoother skin after 24 hours, and promises firmer skin after five days.
So, how does it do this? “We soup it up with antiageing ingredients,” Kohring says.
The wonder ingredient is an amino-peptide complex, a combination of two powerful antiageing ingredients. One is niacinamide, which increases the skin’s natural exfoliation.
“Then there are pentapeptides,” she says. I always thought that was a made-up word. “Oh, no, no, no,” Kohring replies.
Peptides, she explains, are little bits of protein - the structural elements of the skin - the most important being collagen, which creates a foundation for the skin.
When it breaks down - because of age, smoking, UV exposure, devil worshipping - you get wrinkles.
Each peptide is made up of amino acids.
Imagine a chain of beads, with each bead representing an amino acid. Now, count five beads and you have a pentapeptide. The action of the peptides is to make the collagen think it has broken down, giving it the signal to regenerate.
Et voilà, the skin rebuilds itself.
“This research was presented to the World Congress of Dermatology in 2002,” Kohring says proudly. So, does she think that Olay Regenerist is the best cream on the market? “Yes. Definitely.”
We may just have to trust her.
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