The company expects to attract more millennial shoppers with a more realistic representation of what its beauty products can achieve.
CVS Pharmacy, the American healthcare and retail company recently announced that it will be labeling the photos of models appearing in the beauty aisles of the company to notify whether they have been digitally altered.
The move is significant one as CVS is estimated to be the third-most popular skin care and cosmetics products U.S. retailer after Walmart and Target. CVS is the first major American company that has adopted such a policy to mitigate the display of images that have come to create unrealistic ideals of beauty among young women.
CVS said that its 70% of its images will now be flagged as “beauty unaltered” or say if they are digitally altered. The Beauty Mark initiative was announced a year ago but has only recently appeared in CVS stores. CVS declared that by 2020 all stores nationwide will have the Beauty Mark on their photos and that the policy has already been applied to images on CVS.com as well as its social media sites.
Sources cite that 13 brands which included renowned ones like Revlon, Neutrogena and CoverGirl are working with CVS to adopt the policy. Celebrities and social media influencers who are paid to promote the products will not be required to upload only unfiltered, unaltered images.
Kevin Hourican, president of CVS Pharmacy has been reported to say that the company is abstaining from showcasing significantly altered images as such images tend to influence customers in deciding what they want and what they expect to get out of the products. Hourican hopes the representation of more realistic images will attract more millennial shoppers.
Actresses like Kerry Washington and Ashley Graham have also come to join the Beauty Mark initiative. Other brands like Maybelline, L’Oreal, Unilever, Olay, Aveeno, Almay, Rimmel, Burt’s Bees, JOAH and Physicians Formula will also be marking their images to say if they have been altered or not.
Remarkably, CVS has also been the first U.S. drugstore chain which stopped selling cigarettes in 2014, as an initiative to reduce smoking rate.