Marketing: The War on Wrinkles

THE HOTTEST ANTIAGING CREAM ON THE MARKET IS AN OINTMENT MEANT TO GET RID OF STRETCH MARKS--AND IT HAS THE BEAUTY BUSINESS BUZZING

Walk into a Sephora cosmetics store anywhere, and you'll be bombarded with slickly packaged products promising to make you look radiant, smell good and feel gorgeous. Yet almost hidden among those glamorous potions is a plain medicinal box--labeled with the unsexy pitch INTENSIVE CONCENTRATE FOR EXISTING STRETCH MARKS (STRIAE DISTENSAE)--that just happens to be one of the chain's Top 10--selling items. No, stretch marks haven't suddenly become big business. But thanks in part to aggressive ads that proclaim it "Better than Botox?," the scientific-sounding StriVectin-SD has become the hottest thing in the war on wrinkles--a booming industry that's generating billions of...

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