Next year we end the first quarter of the 21st century. The world is not changing, it has already changed and continues to do so. What happens is that sometimes we don't want to see the changes, or assuming these changes forces us to change attitudes, beliefs or even dogmas.

A few days ago I had the pleasure of attending a Beauty Cluster event where I felt that everything that was presented resonated in this same sense. One of the phrases that struck me the most was pronounced by César Val in his speech on Luxury: "knowing is the new owning".

And today knowledge is acquired in such unexpected places as TikTok and other social networks. Television has lost weight, but still retains its presence, and everywhere the ways in which information is communicated have diversified. Advertising spaces are intermingled with the content of programmes and the presenters themselves are in charge of transmitting them. The same is happening in the written press, where sponsored articles are increasingly difficult to distinguish from the rest.

Moreover, the forms of collaboration between the media and companies have evolved considerably and sometimes the sponsorship of content is practically negligible.

On social networks and the internet, knowledge is generated by companies and individuals, by laymen and experts, in equal parts and also without too much differentiation.

In the past, content generated by companies was mistrusted, as it was always intended to sell. But now sponsored content has greater depth, and also the fact that content is spontaneous is no longer a guarantee of truth or quality. Businesses are often looking to support high quality content and the information being shared is rich and valuable.

Therefore, the boundaries that used to divide the sources of knowledge are more blurred than ever. More than ever, people need a critical spirit every time they receive an impact and every time they choose a content creator to follow (be they journalists, writers, bloggers, podcasters, influencers, or any new figure that appears).

But I'm going to focus the topic a bit and talk about what I know, cosmetics. Cosmetic communication.

There are more and more of us who are committed to communicating the benefits of cosmetics in a positive way. Above all, those of us who combine technical and commercial or marketing knowledge see the need to avoid the easy recipes of fear and "nonsense". I am not going to tackle positive communication from a marketing perspective because I am not an expert, so once again I will focus on what I control, on the safety side and the business side, which in this case I believe go more than ever hand in hand.

From a technical point of view, it is quite clear. To comply with the law, with Regulation 655/2013, the best thing to do is to talk about how good your product is, to talk about yourself. About your own efficiency, your safety. How much effort you have put into developing a formulation or how much time you have invested in researching a particular skin condition. How much effort you put into caring for your customer, caring for the environment, caring for the society around you, and so on.

But of course, this is difficult, because it involves having a real say.

The easy way is to fill space by saying everything we don't have. Inventing supposed dangers that we are avoiding and thus giving the impression that we are taking care of our client by avoiding risks that we ourselves invented. The law provides for this, and that is why there is a common criterion number 5, Fairness, which prevents denigrating other companies or ingredients that can legally be used. Nowadays it is very difficult to control the content that is created and sometimes a simple dishonest marketing positioning of a company generates an avalanche of content generated by third parties that can become unstoppable. Brands must be responsible for the content they create and sell without misinformation.

Has anyone ever wondered whether the products we apply to our skin are toxic before seeing the famous bath gel advert that promised to be 0% toxic? Perhaps many of you reading this article don't even remember it, but it was in 2007 or 2008 when a large company decided to make this claim, contributing decisively to the situation we have today. I am not saying that they were to blame or that it was intentional, it was probably the opposite, they wanted to be unique and differential, but they contributed to start a snowball that is still growing today.

We keep crossing ingredients off lists that are already short, such as preservatives, sunscreens, colourings and surfactants.

And the case of the preservatives for me is truly worrisome, because they are entirely necessary and the new alternatives that propose always use to dose much higher, (sometimes even 50 higher times). We are, therefore, increasing a lot the exhibition to these new substances. We will see in some years if we are winning in security with the change or no.

The second horse of battle of the communication in positive is more recent and has to see with the strategy to do feel badly to our customer for act followed promise him that we go him to solve his problems. And this strategy has worked wonderfully during a lot of time: we have felt us given complex and given complex by ours crease, by our celulitis, by our baldness and have generated us the need to buy magic solutions that solve us the problems. What occurs is that neither have crease is so bad neither the products antiarrugas are magic to achieve that we keep the same appearance that had to the 20 years.

However, the world here has also changed, today we are hyper-exposed to our own image and this type of communication is no longer so important. Before the massive irruption of video calls, teleworking and social networks, a person was sporadically exposed to his or her own image: when leaving the house, when returning at night and in a photograph from time to time; one could maintain a self-illusion of one's own image. Today we see ourselves constantly. We take 1000 photos that we share and even when we are meeting someone we are looking at ourselves on the screen, usually in very unfavourable lighting conditions.

So the last thing we need is a brand telling us how terrible our flaws are, we see that. And we also see that a product, no matter how good it is, will never have the same effect as a super beauty filter. You can only be 20 when you are 20 or with very good filters. Taking care of our skin, hair, nails, make-up, today more than ever is something we do for ourselves. More than ever to look good (because we look good a lot).

Consumers today demand to be sold a purpose: not only the what and the how are valued, but also the why. The why is becoming more and more important and is linked to both the ingredients and the purpose of the cosmetic. Why this retinol cream is better than another. Why I should use retinol. Why it is important to take care of my skin.

If our communication is not able to give positive answers to these questions, we end up contradicting ourselves. And in the 21st century, coherence is one of the values most appreciated by consumers. Brands with coherent discourse, that do what they say and say what they do, win the loyalty of their buyers. And in today's environment, where consumers are more rational, where they buy fewer units and make more decisions, maintaining confidence in the brand is one of the best investments we can make.