| Ozone has served a legal notice to Lever for the latter's claim that its Fair & Lovely brand has greater efficacy over its competitors, thus misleading consumers. |
| Fair & Lovely is one of HLLs mega brands and is the market leader in the fairness cream segment. |
| Early this month, Lever had released an advertisement in two leading dailies under the caption"" 'The truth, not just promises' claiming Fair & Lovely to be more effective to Ozone's Nomarks and Garnier's Light. The ad attributed its claim to independent dermatologists and data obtained after interviewing 30 women. As per the ad, Fair & Lovely removes one or more marks in 84 per cent of the users, whereas Nomarks' score was 57 per cent and Garnier 42 per cent. |
| Ozone Ayurvedics said in a media statement, "The notice requires HLL to, among other things, publish an equal sized advertisement tendering an apology for the misleading claims and extend a written assurance of not using the said advertisement again." |
| A Lever spokesperson, when contacted, said, "We have received the notice and we will respond to it. Fair & Lovely anti-marks cream is the top selling product because of its superior formulation, based on extensive R&D and clinical studies done by the Hindustan Lever Research Centre and validated by reputed independent dermatologists. HLL is fully confident of the superior formulation of Fair & Lovely anti-marks cream, and the consumers are liking it." |
| According to Ozone, both legal and medical experts say that the only way such a claim can be made is when all conditions are exactly the same for the three samples of volunteers. |
| This would assume that individuals of all three groups have exactly the same skin type (which influences the rate of absorption of creams), skin thickness, type of sub-dermal fat, and nature of marks on the skin. |
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