Here comes the science part... concentrate!
Pay attention! Here comes the science bit.
—Jennifer Aniston, in different L'Oreal Elvive adverts.
In an ad for something like, say, shampoo, toothpaste, a toothbrush or face wash or somesuch, you'll see a little animated close-up of the effect said product is supposed to have on you. Like... glowy thingies smoothing your flaky hair or a nice blue barrier forming against that nasty plaque.
The celebrity, non-celebrity or voice over person will witter on about the benefits that the product will have on your hair, teeth, pores, etc. Sometimes, fancy chemical names are thrown around.
Usually it bears absolutely no resemblance to anything at all, and anyone who has taken elementary college biology classes could find about a hundred things wrong in the first three seconds. But that's
Hollywood Science for you.
Despite the above page quote, the trope title as a meme goes back to one of Fark's many
Memetic Mutations. Ben Affleck did an ad in Japan that featured the line, "Here comes the SCIENCE!"
Related to
Pain Center. Not to be confused with those warning signs they show on
Mythbusters (Warning!: Science Content) to warn the viewer of the impending um, uh...
science thing.
Compare with
Shaving Is Science
Examples:
- One toothpaste ad hyped its "active oxygen bubbles"...from baking soda, that well-known carbon dioxide generator. What's scary is that it took three months for it to be taken off the air.
- Nivea Visage DNAge Cell Renewal Anti-Age System claims to "de-age" your DNA. If there were the slightest chance that a moisturiser were somehow able to alter your DNA in any way whatsoever, I sure as hell wouldn't be putting it anywhere near my face.
- Scope mouthwash used to advertise as having T25, as if it were a valid designation for a chemical compound.
- Toothbrush commercials always show how the brush's bristles somehow get stuck in the middle of your molars (and that's the molars, never the incisors or the canines) and kick out all the little "plaque particles"... even though it's well known that plaque is actually a whitish bacterial film.
- Brilliantly parodied in a UK advert for BBQ sauce done in the style of a shampoo ad, complete with the narrator saying "And now the sciencey bit" and an animation of ingredients being absorbed into a line of sauce, like all those cheesy graphics of hair strands absorbing various particles.
- The Ponds Institute. Models with fluorescent white labcoats Do Science with computer graphic displays.
- Washing detergents also apply. There was a Tide commercial that somehow manages to "magnetize" dirt away from the cloth.
- Surfactants, my dear Watson. Surfactants.
- "Clinical strength" anything. The phrase has no objective meaning whatsoever.
- AstraZeneca has entire ads built around this, with fancy and science-looking CGI effects designed to evoke concepts of blocking proton pumps in the background as words like "clinical strength" or "proven effectiveness" are bandied around without a whole lot of meaningful information.
- Just what the hell is "Ceramide R" anyway? Wikipedia doesn't seem to recognise its existence.
- It's a marketing gimmick. The only significant difference between the big jug of hand lotion on sale for $1 at the dollar store and the tiny pot of "beauty serum" selling for $129.99 at the beauty counter is the scent. The only beauty item whose quality is dependent on price is shampoo, but even then the real difference is between the really cheap crap sold in the bargain aisle and everything else - really cheap shampoo contains harsher detergents that cause split ends and frizz.
- Sensodyne Iso-active. It says right there in the name of the thing that it is exactly as much use as any other product, yet no-one notices because it sounds so damn sciency.
- Another Sensodyne product hypes its use of "Liquid Calcium" to fill dimples in the teeth or something. Somehow they have 'achieved' this without the paste having to be above 300 Celsius.
