Using Emotive Ingredients to 'Spin A Story'

Each year, beauty companies are under immense pressure to create new and exciting products to replace their past product failures. So...the minions gather around muffins and coffee each year to discover new trends. Most 'discovery sessions' include an evaluation of what new ingredients are on the horizon. For many companies, they find a few sexy ingredients that they can 'spin' a story around, while purposely minimizing their cost by including those ingredients at insignificant levels...an emotive level.

Here's an example from my past. Here's the ingredient list for a body wash that claims: "Ginseng revives your skin".

Water, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Sulfate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Sodium Lauroamphoacetate, Styrene/Acrylates Copolymer, Fragrance, Panax Ginseng Root Extract, Citric Acid, Sodium Benzoate, Polyquaternium-10, Disodium EDTA, Methylchloroisothiazolinone, Methylisothiazolinone, Yellow 5, Blue 1

The Ginseng in this product is included below 0.1%, and frankly, it's never been proven to give any benefit on skin. The team of managers behind this knew/know that the ginseng is useless, but they have no problem selling us an empty promise.