Published: October 18, 2007
AT meetings of 12-step recovery programs, people offer gripping testimonials about their struggles, and rarely fail to mention how long they've been clean. In commercials for Proactiv Solution, the popular acne treatment, celebrities and average joes on the three-step skin-care program tell their tales of woe and often gush about how long their skin has been clear.
Jessica Simpson is one of the stars who promotes the system.
The Proactiv sob sell has galvanized even people who rarely have blemishes to become, well, proactive about their skin.
Rebecca Powell, a graduate student in microbiology at New York University, ordered Proactiv three years ago after seeing an infomercial, although she only occasionally gets a pimple.
Ms. Powell said the products dried out her skin, and she stopped using them. But earlier this month, Ms. Powell, 24, purchased a Proactiv sulfur face mask designed to reduce inflamed pimples. "You see the infomercials and you become more aware of body image stuff and it makes you care more, so you buy it," she said.
Founded in 1995 by two dermatologists, Proactiv has become a phenomenon by transforming the way consumers think about pimples. The brand captured public attention by hiring stars for its infomercials like Vanessa Williams, Jessica Simpson and Sean Combs to lay bare their valiant struggles to attain flawless skin, effectively turning acne into a celebrity malady. But the company's real innovation was repositioning mild breakouts from a routine annoyance that a dab of Clearasil might fix to a preventable condition, like cavities, requiring vigilant daily upkeep.
"Ten years ago, we covered it up, but their message is 'you don't have to have bad skin,'" said Karen Young, the chief executive of the Young Group, a consulting firm to beauty companies. "They have shifted the consumer psyche."
Proactiv has become a blockbuster by motivating consumers to trade up from a $4.99 drugstore product like Clearasil, made with the antibacterial agent benzoyl peroxide, to a 60-day, three-part regimen, also made with benzoyl peroxide, that costs $39.95 for ongoing subscribers.
The brand now has more than five million active customers and annual worldwide sales of about $850 million, 70 percent of which are in the United States. By contrast, sales of acne products in American drugstores were about $155 million for the year that ended July 15, according to Information Resources Inc., a market research firm.
"Right now, we own acne," said Greg Renker, a chief executive of Guthy-Renker, the direct-response television company that sells Proactiv. The company spends about $125 million a year buying time for its infomercials on channels like VH1 and MTV as well as Web sites like Facebook, he said. "We are the fastest-growing acne brand in the world."
The Proactiv story may be just as much about the promotion of acne as a serious disease as it is about the marketing of products to fight it.
"You can get the same amount of benzoyl peroxide at a drug store at a fraction of the cost and it will work as well, provided that you use it," said Dr. Hilary E. Baldwin, the vice chairwoman of the dermatology department at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. Patients with serious acne who tried Proactiv, in her experience, were unhappy with the results and sought prescription treatments, she said.
People typically get acne after hormones cause oil to build up in the hair follicles, trapping bacteria and triggering superficial pimples as well as deep, painful lumps. The most severe forms of acne can be disfiguring and emotionally devastating and are often treated with prescription drugs. But until recently, adults with less serious facial blemishes did not necessarily view themselves as having acne, which they considered a teenage problem.
The founders of Proactiv, Dr. Katie P. Rodan and Dr. Kathy A. Fields, dermatologists in the Bay Area of California, developed the brand for this adult market, especially for women who get flare-ups every month before their periods. And in the process they rebranded the word "acne," making it acceptable to grown-ups.
"Women did not identify with acne; they were using euphemisms like 'stress bumps' or 'monthly breakouts' to describe their problems because they thought acne was an ugly four-letter word or they thought acne was just for teenagers," Dr. Rodan said. She and Dr. Fields receive royalties on Proactiv sales. "What the infomercial did was give us half an hour to explain that those breakouts you are suffering on a monthly basis are really acne and it is not a curable problem, but it is treatable and manageable," Dr. Rodan said.
There are no definitive statistics on the prevalence of acne. Nearly 17 million Americans have acne, according to the Web site of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, www.niams.gov, a division of the National Institutes of Health. Meanwhile, the American Academy of Dermatology, which received several million dollars last year from pharmaceutical companies, said 40 million to 50 million Americans have acne; a spokeswoman said that figure is based on a paper, published in the academy's medical journal, that applied estimates of acne incidence to census data.
But pimples are such a lucrative business that the skin industry is starting to promote acne as if it were a menace on par with heart disease.
Via Nytimes
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