Shanghai Advertising Association Promulgates Standards for Cosmetic Advertising

In accordance with the Cosmetic Supervision and Administration Regulations, the Shanghai Advertising Association promulgated the Standards for Cosmetic Advertising (hereinafter referred to as the Standards) in May. The Standards acts as a reference for cosmetic companies when advertising products. 

The noteworthy points in the Standards are as follows:

1. For advertisements of special cosmetics or advertisements indicating efficacies of special cosmetics, special cosmetics registration certificates issued by the National Medical Products Administration shall be provided; otherwise, the advertisements cannot be published. 

2. For hair growing products, depilating products, breast beauty products, slimming products and deodorants successfully registered before Jan 1, 2021, their advertisements are permitted to be published until Dec. 31, 2021 with the existing registration certificates. 

3. For advertisements using information relating to performance, function or sales data,

• where third-party surveys or statistical data is involved, the reference sources shall be indicated. If there is an application scope or validity period for the relevant data, corresponding information shall also be indicated.

• where the data are derived from the results of experiments or surveys, if the conditions, methods and scope of the experiments or surveys may have a significant impact on consumers' correct understanding of the relevant advertising data, the information should be marked in the advertisements clearly.

4. Cosmetics advertisements shall not indicate medical effects and contain terms such as "Chinese medicine", "Chinese herbal medicine", or "Chinese medicine essence". But for permitted Chinese medicine ingredients used in cosmetics, the specific names (such as panax ginseng, polygonum multiflorum root, etc.) can appear in the cosmetic advertisements.