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Malaysia’s influencers cash in on health and beauty boom as critics cry ‘pseudoscience’
- Promoting health and beauty brands can earn Malaysian social media celebrities as much as US$2,400 per post, depending on follower count
- But dubious health claims and a string of incidents involving adulterants has observers calling for greater due diligence, as regulators strain to keep up
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Ushar Danielein Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia’s motorists have long grown accustomed to the billboards that dot the country’s major thoroughfares such as the 772km North-South Expressway, but in recent years these seemingly ubiquitous hoardings have begun to carry a new sort of advertisement.
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Siti Nurhaliza, Neelofa and Uqasha Senrose are just some of the many Malaysian influencers and television stars whose smiling faces can now be seen plastered across these billboards – each promoting a different brand that vie for prominence in the country’s ever-growing health and beauty sector.
Ads for products such as “slimming tea”, as well as various lotions and serums touted as cure-alls for unsightly spots and skin blemishes, often feature other faces too: those of the brands’ founders, many of whom are celebrities in their own right on account of their large social media followings.
These tech-savvy entrepreneurs spend multiple millions getting their products in front of as many eyes as possible. And though online ads may not be as conspicuous as roadside billboards, active users of Malaysian social media are sure to have scrolled past at least one of these omnipresent offerings as they browse Instagram or Facebook.
The industry’s rise, sustained even amid the Covid-19 pandemic, has been a boon for the brands’ founders. Increasingly, however, the proliferation of quasi-pharmaceuticals has raised concerns about the – possibly fatal – consequences for a buying public, who activist groups say are too often enticed by misleading “pseudoscience”.
Dangerous ingredients
Between 2008 and 2019, Malaysia’s National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency listed no fewer than 171 health and beauty products that it had found contained banned ingredients, including poisonous mercury and tretinoin, an acne and leukaemia medication that carries a wide range of side effects from skin irritation and hair loss to birth defects in unborn children if used while pregnant.
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