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Celebrating Authentic Beauty: One Year of Beauty Mark

January 24, 2019 | Innovation

The CVS Beauty Mark

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In early 2018, we launched our Beauty Mark initiative and committed to no longer materially alter our beauty imagery. One year later, on January 24, CVS and brand partner executives, along with beauty industry insiders and experts, gathered in the CVS Pharmacy in Times Square to share the progress we’d made in our efforts to lead positive change around transparency in beauty imagery.

The event included a first look at our updated beauty aisles featuring Beauty Mark compliant imagery and celebrated the national brand partners that joined us over the past year in this effort.

“As a purpose-led health care company as well as one of the largest beauty retailers in the country, we want the millions of customers that visit CVS Pharmacy locations each day to see a more authentic and diverse representation of beauty,” said Kevin Hourican, President of CVS Pharmacy. “We applaud the brand partners that truly embraced this initiative and helped us in taking significant steps forward in our effort to change an industry standard that has an impact on the health and self-esteem of our mutual customers.”

Our Progress Toward 100-Percent Transparency

Our goal with Beauty Mark is to have ALL of the beauty imagery in our stores, online and in our marketing reflect transparency - either labeled with the Beauty Mark to indicate an image has not been retouched or labeled as “digitally altered” - by the end of 2020.

Since announcing the initiative in early 2018, we’ve made significant progress toward that goal:

  • By early February 2019, nearly 70 percent of the beauty imagery in CVS Pharmacy locations nationwide will be compliant with our Beauty Mark commitment.

  • Of that, nearly 70 percent will feature the CVS Beauty Mark, indicating those images have not been materially altered.

  • All beauty imagery, including brand partner imagery, used on www.CVS.com, and in all marketing to customers, including on social media, will now reflect the CVS Beauty Mark commitment.

  • Our beauty influencer partners on social media will now be contractually required to only create and share imagery that has not been digitally altered and does not use social filters.

At our event in New York City, which followed an exclusive Today show segment about the initiative, we revealed our reset beauty aisles featuring digitally unaltered images labeled with the Beauty Mark of Ayesha Curry for CoverGirl, actress Kerry Washington for Neutrogena, model Ashley Graham for Revlon and other influential brand ambassadors.

These brand partners and others, including Olay, Almay, Aveeno, Rimmel, JOAH, L’Oreal, Maybelline, Unilever, Burt’s Bees and Physician’s Formula, have joined us in committing to full transparency in their beauty imagery by the end of 2020.

Curry was in attendance at the unveiling, which also included a panel discussion, moderated by journalist Katie Couric, with industry experts and influencers sharing their unique perspective on the implications of the Beauty Mark initiative.

Spreading Awareness Beyond Our Aisles

To raise awareness about Beauty Mark and the importance of authenticity in beauty imagery, we’re asking customers to submit digitally unaltered images of themselves via social media using the hashtag #beautyunaltered.

We’re also using this Beauty Mark milestone as an opportunity to share the importance of empowering girls and young women through a partnership with Girls Inc. This month at CVS Pharmacy, when you purchase select Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble and L’Oreal beauty products, a $1 donation will be made to Girls Inc., up to $300,000.

Customers can also visit cvs.com to purchase a limited edition “Sans Retouching” t-shirt featuring the Beauty Mark and created by lifestyle experts Sara and Erin Foster. All proceeds from sales will benefit Girls Inc.