Multinational corporate giant Hindustan Unilever Ltd. announced the evolution of its skincare portfolio with the rebranding of its flagship brand fair& lovely. It claims that they are going to stop using the word’ fair’ within the brand name. The rationale behind this, as explained by HUL, is its objective to require the brand’s journey towards a more inclusive vision of beauty. The new name is awaited for the regulatory approvals and therefore the changed name is anticipated within the next few months.
Another claim made by HUL is, over the last decade, Fair and Lovely’s advertising has evolved to speak a message of women’s empowerment. The vision of the brand is to adopt a holistic approach to beauty that cares for people, that has got to be inclusive and diverse for everybody and everywhere.
Another important thing that they mentioned is,
the brand is committed to celebrating all skin tones. The symbolic measuring units like fairness, whitening, skin lightening, etc. which were normally considered as several yardsticks towards glow even tone, skin clarity, and radiance and healthy skin slowly became outdated. In spite, fairness has been heavily referenced within the product’s past ads. They also removed the word ‘fair/fairness’, ‘white/whitening’, and ‘light/lightning’ from fair and lovely’s packaging, which could indicate a fairness-led transformation. The cameo with two faces showing shade transformation and the shade guides were aloof from the packs.
They also claim that they are going to still evolve its advertising, to feature women of various skin tones, representative of the range of beauty across India. In the past advertising, they depicted a dark-skinned woman but unfortunately, it became a failure and that they realized fairness as a depicting factor for fulfillment.
The chairman and managing director of HUL, Sanjiv Mehta remarked that they are making their skincare portfolio more inclusive and want to lead the celebration of a more diverse portrayal of beauty. In 2019, they made some changes such as removed the cameo with two faces furthermore because the shade guides from the packaging of fair and lovely, and the brand communication progressed from fairness to glow. These changes led to an increase in its customer base.
