Marketing: The War on Wrinkles

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Perhaps most important, though, is the Botox issue. Even as Allergan's litigation with Klein-Becker about StriVectin's "Better than Botox?" ads is pending, the Food and Drug Administration has warned that StriVectin might be reclassified as a drug (which Klein-Becker is seeking to avoid). At the same time, other cosmetics competitors have jumped on the opportunity to compare themselves to Botox. Estée Lauder's Perfectionist is promoted in its ads as the ideal cream "for every woman who says no to Botox"; Avon's Anew Clinical Deep Crease Concentrate jabs at Botox with the line, "look stunning, not stunned" and contains a trademarked compound called Bo-Hylurox, a combination of a plant extract and hyaluronic acid (a jellylike substance found in skin tissue that helps restore its moisture). Admits Avon's Teal: "We made the [term] up. It telegraphs Botox and hyaluronic acid." And then there is Allergan itself, which came out with its own antiwrinkle cream in January, Prevage (sold only through dermatologists), featuring a 1% concentration of the antioxidant idebenone.

The big question, of course, is whether any of those things actually work. The cosmetics industry spends millions on real science, employing teams of chemists, pharmacologists and microbiologists in labs all over the world. And in clinical tests, each company says its cream decreases the depth of fine facial lines to some degree. None of them claim, however, that their products make wrinkles disappear completely, the way a shot of Botox can. Still, the search for a better fountain-of-youth cream continues. Avon is about to complete a $100 million state-of-the-art research facility in Suffern, N.Y. And Clinique last month announced a $7 million research grant devoted to the study of skin with Weill Cornell Medical College, the first ever collaboration between a university and a cosmetic brand. Perhaps the most revealing insight comes from Estée Lauder's research chief Daniel Maes, who notes that along with peptides and other compounds, his firm's Perfectionist cream includes optic polymers that reflect the light that hits the skin--creating the optical illusion that a wrinkle is smaller by blurring its edges. In other words, it's all about appearances. And who could argue with that?