Watermelons, Syringes, and Regulation: Instagram Marketing by Cosmetic Clinics in the UK and the Netherlands

Cosmetic clinics use social media to inform and market to prospective patients. Evidence from social media posts by the UK and Dutch cosmetic clinics illustrates the precarious balance between professionalism and commercialism, and raises important questions for the regulation of these marketing communication efforts.

A random selection of Instagram posts by Dutch and the UK clinics which offer (non-) invasive cosmetic procedures were selected for a qualitative content analysis. The corpus of data comprised 395 posts by six Dutch and four UK clinics, published between January 2018 and July 2019. The method of analysis was inspired by previous qualitative studies into the marketing of cosmetic procedures and can be described as a (discursive) thematic analysis.

The tension between the medical-professional and commercial nature of cosmetic procedures was evident in the Instagram posts by Dutch and UK clinics. Despite calls for 'ethical' marketing on social media, this study illustrates that marketing materials are not always in line with current advertising guidelines. Whereas advertising standards authorities have warned against the trivialization of cosmetic procedures, posts by clinics backgrounded the medical nature of procedures in favor of more commercial advertising appeals. Furthermore, the posts demonstrated little diversity in terms of models' gender, ethnicity and body type, which reinforces narrow contemporary beauty ideals.

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