Glow & Lovely


Glow & Lovely is a skin-lightening cosmetic product of Hindustan Unilever introduced to the market in India in 1975. Glow & Lovely is available in India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and other parts of Asia, and is also exported to other parts of the world, such as the West, where it is sold in Asian supermarkets.
Unilever patented the brand Fair & Lovely in 1971 after the patenting of niacinamide, a melanin suppressor, which is the cream's main active ingredient. Glow and Lovely contains stearic acid, mainly sourced from animal body fats which contain the highest amount of stearic acid by weight compared to plant-based fats.
The target consumer profile for Glow & Lovely is the 18 and above age group, and the bulk of the users are in the age 21–35 category, though there is evidence that girls as young as 12–14 also use the cream. As of 2012 the brand occupied 80% of the lightning cream market in India and is one of Hindustan Unilever's most successful cosmetics lines.

Criticism

Marketing campaigns of the product have been criticized for promoting colorism. Marketing for the product in all countries implies whiter skin equates beauty and self-confidence. Hindustan Unilever Limited research claims that "90 per cent of Indian women want to use whiteners because it is aspirational, like losing weight. A fair skin is, like education, regarded as a social and economic step up." Following this controversy, including a 2007 television advertisement for Ponds White Beauty in which the actor Saif Ali Khan expressed preference for the fair-skinned Neha Dhupia over the darker-skinned Priyanka Chopra, the company suspended television advertisements for the product.

Rebranding

In 2020, Hindustan Unilever announced the rebranding of its flagship brand Fair & Lovely. The company will stop using the word ‘Fair’ in the brand name ‘Fair & Lovely’. The new name of the brand will be ‘Glow & Lovely’.