While we know that what all kinds of producers are promising us in ads and television spots is not exactly the truth and nothing but the truth, few are the cases when a major company is singled out for telling falsities. Estee Lauder is the latest to go through this, as its most recent ad for Tri-Aktiline Instant Deep Wrinkle Filler face cream has just been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK, the British media is reporting.

Apparently, the ad ran just in the written local media and was pulled off by the ASA before it could “mislead” any more female customers, especially since this is one filler/face cream that does not come that cheap, at £25 for a 30ml container. The ASA says, in a statement just made public, that the ad for the cream stated, among many other things, that women using it would “see wrinkles disappear instantly,” which is by far a “misleading” and erroneous claim.

The ad also said that 83 percent of testers saw “an improvement in the appearance of lines,” all possible because of its polymer composition, which “fill in the ‘cracks’ or wrinkles on the skin surface, resulting in a more even-textured look,” Esteee Lauder claimed. However, the ASA was notified by more than one female customer who reported results quite the opposite from what was being advertised.

Practically, the ASA decided that, while the face cream does just what it says when using imaging techniques and in theory, “the same effects could not be detected by a human observer,” because it does not make wrinkles go away but barely improves their appearance. “We noted the ad stated, ‘Start to see your wrinkles disappear instantly,’ and considered that that claim implied the product could reduce the wrinkles themselves, not merely reduce the appearance of the wrinkles.” the ASA added.       

In order to avoid further confusion, the ASA decided that the ad be pulled off the market and never run again in this form. Meanwhile, Estee Lauder is saying that what ASA picked on was just a question of semantics, failing to see and interpret all the data accurately. “We feel the ASA failed to understand the nature of the product as a physical filler and therefore they wrongly interpreted the data we did submit.” reads the statement from Beauty Bank, a branch within Estee Lauder.